MacOS – Keyboard shortcut for monospaced formatting in Notes app

I've been looking for doing this for a very long time.

I finally managed to end up with something that really works great for me, with the help of Alfred and Highlight CLI tool.

Here is the Alfred script portion :

query="{query}"
if echo $query|grep -e "^__SHORTCUT__"
then
    echo "$query"|sed -E "s/^__SHORTCUT__//"|pbcopy
    syntax=txt
else
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c" using {command down}'
    syntax=$query
fi

pbpaste|/usr/local/bin/highlight --syntax $syntax --font Menlo --font-size 12 --out-format=rtf|pbcopy
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using {command down}'

Make sure the shortcut trigger adds __SHORTCUT__ to be recognized and argument is "Selection in OSX" :

Short demo https://youtu.be/y8NJT52APRQ

This isn't exactly what you were asking for, but perhaps it is close enough.

Just below the menu place where you bring up the color picker (Format->Font->Show Colors) are two other menu items: Copy Style and Paste Style. This is what worked for me:

1. Select some text in your note
2. Manually set the color, like you do now (via Show Colors)
3. Set the cursor anywhere inside the colored text (don't select any text, just put the cursor there)
4. Choose Format->Font->Copy Style
5. From now on (including across relaunches of the Notes app) you can select the text you want to color and simply use the keyboard shortcut for Paste Style!

Hope this works well enough for you.