.XPANDER User Guide & Video Tutorials

Type a short trigger like .sig, .cal, or .jd in any Windows app and watch .XPANDER replace it instantaneously as you type.

1. 1 Open .XPANDER Settings from the system tray icon and select the Expandings tab.
2. 2 Click + Add, enter a short trigger (e.g. .sig) and your replacement text, and set Mode to Immediate.
3. 3 Click Save. Type .sig in Notepad, Outlook, Teams, or your browser—.XPANDER backspaces the trigger and injects the replacement in milliseconds.

Store formatted email signatures, tables, colorful links, or screenshots/logos directly inside a snippet trigger.

1. 1 Copy formatted text from Word, Outlook, Teams, or a web page—or take a screenshot to your clipboard (Win + Shift + S).
2. 2 Focus the Replacement field of a snippet in .XPANDER and press Ctrl + V.
3. 3 The field automatically locks with a 🔒 Rich or 🖼 Image badge and stores the binary payload in a compressed sidecar file (blobs/<id>.xblob).
4. 4 Want plain text instead? Press Ctrl + Shift + V to paste unformatted text without locking. Click any 🖼 Image badge to inspect the image in the on-demand preview modal.

Use Ctrl + Alt + X either to expand Hotkey-mode triggers on demand or—when no trigger is typed—to open the Floating Snippet Search Palette.

1. 1 If you typed a trigger set to Hotkey mode (e.g. ,bio) and press Ctrl + Alt + X, .XPANDER expands it immediately.
2. 2 If no matching trigger is in the buffer, pressing Ctrl + Alt + X opens the Floating Search Palette centered on your active monitor.
3. 3 Type any words from the trigger or replacement (multi-word, case-insensitive). Image snippets show live thumbnails—rest your mouse on a thumbnail for 200 ms to see a larger preview.
4. 4 Use ↑ / ↓ / PgUp / PgDn and press Enter (or click a row) to insert directly into the app you were typing in. Press Esc or Ctrl + Alt + X again to close.

Embed live placeholders in your snippets that compute current dates, localized weekday/month names, ISO week numbers, or transformed clipboard contents at paste time.

1. 1 In the Expandings tab, click [💡 View dynamic tokens] to open the interactive, draggable Token Reference window with live previews.
2. 2 Click any token row to insert it directly into your active snippet (or copy it to the clipboard).
3. 3 Combine custom patterns like {date:Dddd, Mmmm D, YYYY} (or force Danish/English with {date:Dddd:da}) and clipboard transforms like {clipboard:trim} or {clipboard:filename}.

Highlight text anywhere in Windows and press Ctrl + CapsLock to open a fast popup menu that transforms casing, spacing, or sanitizes filenames.

1. 1 Select any text in your editor, browser, File Explorer rename box, or email client.
2. 2 Press Ctrl + CapsLock (configurable in General settings).
3. 3 Pick UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case, lowerCamelCase, PascalCase, kebab-case, snake_case, or Clean Windows Filename (strips < > : " / \ | ? * and clamps to 255 bytes).

Synchronize standard Windows Open and Save As file dialogs (#32770) to the folder currently active in File Explorer simply by pressing Alt + Tab.

1. 1 Ensure Quick Switch is enabled in the General tab of .XPANDER Settings.
2. 2 When an application opens a standard Windows Open or Save dialog, Alt + Tab to your open File Explorer window (supports Windows 11 multi-tab Explorer).
3. 3 Alt + Tab back to the Open/Save dialog—.XPANDER automatically navigates the dialog to that exact folder path.

Share your snippet library across work and personal PCs via OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive while keeping every trigger, template, and .xblob image encrypted at rest.

1. 1 In Settings → General, move your configuration folder to your OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive folder.
2. 2 Toggle on Encrypt configuration file and confirm. .XPANDER encrypts config.toml and all .xblob files with AES-256-GCM and stores the 256-bit key in Windows Credential Manager.
3. 3 Copy your One-Time Recovery Key and store it in your password manager. When you connect a second PC to the same cloud folder, paste the recovery key once—Windows Credential Manager remembers it from then on.

Tailor how many characters .XPANDER keeps in its ring buffer (2–10 chars) and how quickly it scrubs memory after you stop typing (2–10 seconds).

1. 1 Adjust Buffer Size (2–10 characters, default: 7) in Settings → General. When saving snippets, .XPANDER advises you if a trigger is longer than your buffer or if you can trim the buffer to save RAM.
2. 2 Adjust Auto-Clear Buffer (2–10 seconds, default: 5s). Once the timer fires, every character in the ring buffer is cryptographically zeroized (write_volatile).
3. 3 Need to suspend expansion temporarily? Right-click the .XPANDER system tray icon and click Pause (the icon changes to indicate paused state).