As is his wont, Topher Kessler published a useful post the other day on MacFixIt: “How to access the character palette in OS X”. Here were his 3 methods:

  1. The Edit menu
  2. The Input menu
  3. Hot keys

I’ve been using the 2nd method for years, but I eventually grew tired of clicking on that little menulet item to open either the Keyboard Viewer or the Character Viewer, both of which I use a lot. Instead, I used Keyboard Maestro to create two macros. Here’s what I did:

  1. Created a new Macro Group called Open….
  2. I specified that the Macro Group is Available in all applications & Always activated.
  3. I created a new Macro named Open Character Viewer.
  4. Here’s what I specified for the Macro’s details:
    1. Trigger: Ctrl-Shift-C
    2. For New Action, select Control Flow > If Then Else.
    3. Make sure your actions match the following:
    4. Press Edit so you’ve saved the macro.
  5. I created a new Macro named Open Keyboard Viewer.
  6. Here’s what I specified for the Macro’s details:
    1. Trigger: Ctrl-Shift-C (yes, it’s the same as the Open Character Viewer macro)
    2. For New Action, select Control Flow > If Then Else.
    3. Make sure your actions match the following:
    4. Press Edit so you’ve saved the macro.
  7. Test it by pressing Ctrl-Shift-C. You should see a little overlay like this:
  8. Press 1 to open the Character Viewer, & 2 to open the Keyboard Viewer. When you’re done with the app, press Ctrl-Shift-C again, & then press 1 or 2 to close the appropriate program.

There you go. I find this little Keyboard Maestro macro to be useful & quick, & best of all, I can remove an icon from my Mac’s menu bar. Another win for Keyboard Maestro!