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OK—this might be a bit on the fringes of being off-topic, as it's not a need for DP…

…but it would be so convenient when using Finale and MediaComposer if I could remap the decimal key (.) on the keypad of my extended keyboard to type a colon when I hold down the shift key (or any other modifier). I've built a couple app launchers in Automator, but I'm not up to speed enough to find a way there and all the online posts on this topic are from people who want to change the decimal to a comma for European use.

Any ideas?

Would the Text tab in Keyboard preferences do what you want? It substitutes entered text with the text you specify. I don't know if it is key specific rather than character specific. If it is character specific, it will do the same thing when you press the other "dot" key. As long as you don't need that specific text to be something else in other apps, it might be good enough.

bayswater wrote:Would the Text tab in Keyboard preferences do what you want? It substitutes entered text with the text you specify. I don't know if it is key specific rather than character specific. If it is character specific, it will do the same thing when you press the other "dot" key. As long as you don't need that specific text to be something else in other apps, it might be good enough.

Thanks, but that's the first thing I tried: I can get it to offer the colon substitute in simple text apps, but not where I need it.

If the key press you want is a keyboard shortcut for a specific command in a specific app, you can use the Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard preferences. If you just want a colon entered as text, I don't know what else there is in OS X if the former text substitute doesn't work. There are a load of 3rd party apps for remapping the keyboard (e.g. Karabiner) but that seems overkill to remap one key.