MacOS – How to i change and customize the special characters on the keyboard

internationalizationkeyboardmacosukelele

This is my first post at AskDifferent, hopefully it works out.

My problem:

  • i want to insert the symbol "λ" aka 'lamda' everytime i use the Option-L key. However, by default my OS Mountain Lion inserts "¬".

My question:

  • How can i change this permanently and for every application i open (i.e. any browser, MS Word, Finder, etc…). I've never used "¬" but as an
    engineering student i very often require "λ."

This post was very informative and in depth:

How can I expand the number of special characters I can type using my keyboard?

However i have no desire to change my overall layout – only a couple keys. It didn't really address the simple question i have.

Is there a way to do this without creating a new keyboard layout? Can i not simply change a single special character from "¬" to "λ" ?
I am currently looking at the "Ukelele" application but i don't want to be creating all sorts of new stuff.

Thank You.

Best Answer

You might want to try just defining ¬ as λ in system prefs/language & text/text/symbol and text substitutions. Normally you need to type a space or another character to get the switch, and there may be some apps it does not work in (Pages and Word have their own symbol and text substitution settings).