Insert special characters more easily
Inspired by One Thing Well’s post about Copy Paste Character, here a couple more solution how you could insert characters like →, ⌘, ⇧, ↩ more easily.
TextExpander
Obviously TextExpander is the first thing that comes to mind when talking about “make things easier to type out”. Actually I’ve done this for myself and shared a Symbols.textexpander a while ago. (German)
You can either download these snippets directly or add them via URL.
`http://files.zettt.de/textexpander/Symbols.textexpander`
Mr. @MacLemon also provides something similar. (German) I would recommend to check out these snippets with a proper English description on MacUpdate: Unicode Snippets.
Keyboard Maestro
The yesterday mentioned Keyboard Maestro now has a Macro Library with something similar.
Under Text there are to Libraries that you can add. Funky Glyphs and Menu Glyphs. Menu Glyphs is probably more what you want to add. It includes things like →, ⌘, ⌫, etc, whereas Funky Glyphs includes, well, funky glyphs like ▲,☥,❋.
PopChar X
PopChar X is a really great application that allows you to search all special characters by their name. You can add favorites and search for special characters in different fonts. I reviewed it here.