macOS LaTeX Shortcuts

This script generates macOS text substitutions to allow for LaTeX-like unicode symbol shortcuts using macOS' native autocorrections. Note that due to the nature of unicode, the symbols may or may not be the same on other os or platforms.

Installation

• Download Text Substitutions.plist from releases;
• Alternatively, execute python create_plist.py to generate Text Substitutions.plist;
• In System Preferences | Keyboard | Text, drag Text Substitutions.plist onto the left table.

Symbols

The script contains most of the symbols listed here. Additionally, it also contains macOS functional symbols including , ⌘, ⌃, ⌥, ⇧, ⇪, ⇥, ⏏, ↩, ⌫, ⎋ and ␣. For the full list of symbols, please refer to shortcuts.py.

Usages

There are two ways to invoke the shortcuts:

• in English or any languages that does not use an seperate input source, use \ with the command to trigger the shortcut. e.g. type \infty and then press space to get the ∞ symbol;

  

• in Chinese or any languages that use an seperate input source, use v with the command to trigger the shortcut. e.g. type vinfty in Chinese input source to get the ∞ symbol. This is due to the fact that typing \ cannot trigger input source prompt.

  

Note that the autocorrection also automatically insert a space after the correction, so you may need remove the space in some cases.

The autocorrection ignore cases, so please use big in front of the command to get the symbols that starts with a capital letter in LaTeX. e.g. type \bigomega in English mode to get \Omega (Ω), or type \bigrightarrow to get \Rightarrow (⇒).

To get \mathbb or \mathcal symbols, use the environment name + character as the command. e.g. type \vbbz to get \mathbb{Z} (ℤ) and type \call to get \mathcal{L} (ℒ). Note that as in vanilla LaTeX, these environment only support a subset of characters, and please refer to shortcuts.py to get the full list of supported symbols.

To get combining symbols like x̄ or ŵ, please add the combing symbol after typing the characters that you want to combine with. e.g. Type \omega \bar \hat to get ω̄̂. You need to manually remove the spaces so that the bar and the hat combine with the ω instead of the space. Due to the limitation of unicode, long combining symbols like \widehat or \underbar is not supported.