Unfortunately, they don’t expand instantly as they are typed, and require pressing tab. This is fine for very long, hardly used snippets.

For things typed frequently eg >> changing to => the single tab makes typing it longer (3 keys vs 2 key presses) 

That example above is handy on 40% keyboards where some keys aren’t easily accessible.

VS Code has snippets https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/userdefinedsnippets

Unfortunately, they don’t expand instantly as they are typed, and require pressing tab. This is fine for very long, hardly used snippets.

For things typed frequently eg &gt;&gt; changing to =&gt; the single tab makes typing it longer (3 keys vs 2 key presses) 

That example above is handy on 40% keyboards where some keys aren’t easily accessible.

The [neovim](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=asvetliakov.vscode-neovim) extension defers insert mode to VSCode. In other words, inoremap doesn't work at all.

Is there a VSCode way to simulate inoremap? e.g. typing `.[` to expand to `-&gt;array()`

Note: there is this closed [issue](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/64135) which outlines what I'm looking for.

Note 2: [VIM extension](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim) has "vim.insertModeKeyBindings" settings, but I would like to use neovim instead.

Thanks!

Neovim extension and inoremap