Juggling Keyboard/Spotlight/Quicksilver ⌃⌥⌘ ␣ key combos

Historically, the key combo shortcut for invoking Spotlight, invoking Quicksilver, and toggling the international Unicode input keyboards are all the same, namely, Command Space (⌘ ␣). To include all three features in my workflow, here's what I've done:

Quicksilver has long used the Control key (⌃) as another standard option, and it also has a double-tap option for invoking. And then, moving the international keyboard input to utilize the Option key (⌥) everything gets cleared up. So, all I need remember is Command key for Spotlight to search the contents of files on my drive, Option key for for toggling back and forth with Greek input, and Control key for Quicksilver and all its magic. It quickly becomes muscle-memory if you use them as frequently as I do.

Here's the full summary:

⌘ ␣	Spotlight invoke
⌥⌘ ␣	Spotlight window invoke
⌥ ␣	Toggle two most recent input keyboard
⌃⌥ ␣	Cycle among input keyboards
⌃ ␣	Quicksilver invoke
⌃⌃	Quicksilver double-tap invoke

(Truth be told, I've set the primary invoke for Quicksilver to ⌃⌘ ␣ but still always use the ⌃⌃ double-tap to invoke. This is because I've kept Word's default ⌃ ␣ as "remove character formatting", which I use a ton.)

Update: In Snow Leopard, you can ignore the "Select next keyboard" command that cycles through them, since now you can hold down the "Select Previous" key combination and get a nice HUD to move around.

Special Key Symbols

This has been an increasingly popular reference page on the Macintosh Biblioblog. Lot's of folks come here looking for the Mac key symbol for the alt key or the option key or the control key or the open apple key, or other standard symbols for the Macintosh keyboard. Apparently it is a handy reference to have all the popular symbols for the special keys on the keyboard. Here they are more or less in order from left to right, including Unicode Hex code point references:

⎋	Escape	U+238B
⇥	Tab forward	U+21E5
⇤	Tab back	U+21E4
⇪	Capslock	U+21EA
⇧	Shift	U+21E7
⌃	Control	U+2303
⌥	Option (Alt, Alternative)	U+2325
	Apple symbol 1	U+F8FF
⌘	Command (Open Apple) 2	U+2318
␣	Space	U+2423
⏎ ↩	Return	U+23CE U+21A9
⌫	Delete back	U+232B
⌦	Delete forward	U+2326
﹖⃝	Help	U+003F & U+20DD
⇱ ↖ ↸	Home	U+21F1 U+2196 U+21B8
⇲ ↘	End	U+21F2 U+2198
⇞	Pageup	U+21DE
⇟	Pagedown	U+21DF
↑ ⇡	Up arrow	U+2191 U+21E1
↓ ⇣	Down arrow	U+2193 U+21E3
← ⇠	Left arrow	U+2190 U+21E0
→ ⇢	Right arrow	U+2192 U+21E2
⌧	Clear	U+2327
⇭	Numberlock	U+21ED
⌤	Enter	U+2324
⏏	Eject	U+23CF
⌽	Power 3	U+233D

For information on how to type or enter these symbols in your documents, have a look at Entering Unicode Text and Symbols.
1 The Apple symbol  is in the corporate private range and is only available in Mac fonts. It can be typed with Option+Shift+k ( ⌥⇧+k ).
2 For the history on the Apple key symbol/Command key symbol, have a look here.

3 Most fonts render this code point as IEC 5010 "line within a circle", , not , IEC 5009 "line partially within a broken circle" which is found on newest keyboards, though some fonts do.

(If any symbol isn't displaying correctly, Unicode font replacement is the culprit. Everything tests great in latest versions of Safari and Firefox.)

Last updated: 9/19/12