Of all the neat utilities I have found for the Mac, one of the most useful has been PopChar X.  PopChar X is a simple utility that gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert symbols and international characters into your writing.  For someone like me, with a German last name that, in it’s formal state, requires an umlaut, this is an absolute necessity.This is the main interface of PopChar.  As you can see, this makes it very easily to select a font, and any symbols associated with that font very quickly.  It also enables you, via double-click, to easily insert that symbol where your cursor was before calling up PopChar.  Bringing PopChar up is very easy, as it is always hiding, ready, in the background.  Simple navigate to the top-left of your screen, and you will see a small letter P.  That is the symbol that launches PopChar – and it always runs on startup as well (which of course is no problem at all, since the program is very tiny and does not hog any RAM or processor cycles.)

For such a small, simple app, the program does provide a surprising number of options and settings, such as where you’d like to put the trigger (one of three places, as you can see), and when you’d like the window to close (the app does a great job staying out of your way.)  This program does pretty much everything I hoped and expected it would do, and a someone who frequently works with and comes into contact with international people, it is absolutely indispensable.

One further great feature of this app – and this is the feature that really brings it all together – is that it can help you to learn the keyboard shortcuts for the symbols that you frequently use – certainly an a+ feature, and in my opinion, the feature that really makes it worth the money that Ergonis, the developer, asks.

Speaking of money – the only downside to this app is the price.  It runs approximately $38 (29.99 €, and yes, I did use PopChar to insert that euro symbol).  To some, that may seem steep.  However, I content that, at least for me, making the usage of international characters this easy is well worth the price.  For more information on PopChar X, you can visit Ergonis on the web.