The Extra Keys tool panel

Type any accented characters for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Scandinavian and other languages. Also Cyrillic, Greek and many other special symbols. This small Windows desktop tool enables easy input of letters and symbols that may not appear on your normal keyboard.

Simply an alternative to to other methods such as the Windows character map - convenient, easy, lightweight, needs no system changes.

A mouse click on a letter button types it directly into the selected application at the current cursor position. The character is also copied to the Clipboard. In some situations, typing directly into another program may not work but the character can still be inserted by simply using Paste.

Most applications will display common accents with no trouble, but more unusual characters may need an appropriate font.

Choice of 'key sets' - characters are grouped into regional and function sets to keep the tool panel small, but with a very large range quickly available.

Safe to use - Extra Keys synthesizes keystrokes, exactly as if entered from the real keyboard. It does nothing else and does not interfere with the system in any other way. It is a portable, self-contained appliction program with no special requirements.

Small, simple and minimal - the on-screen panel of keys is designed to be as compact as possible. A 'more/less' button enables rapid display of an expanded panel with additional punctuation marks and special symbols.

Quick to access - the button panel window minimizes to a system-tray icon, so always available at a single click. The icon may optionally be loaded at Windows startup.

This tool has always been included as part of our Plant Base software, and still is. However, it is available as a separate stand-alone freeware utility - free and unrestricted with no registration, no time limits, no adverts or nags. If you find it valuable, please consider making a small donation toward it's further development.

Also available and now free is the extended Extra Keys Pro edition, which has additional configuration options and key sets. The biggest difference is the ability to output various character codes, making it useful when editing HTML or othe source files. Read more about Extra Keys Pro