Extra Keys

Extra Keys is a small software application whose purpose is to help you apply a virtual keyboard on your desktop, which offers quick access to a wide range of accented and special characters for different languages, such as French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Scandinavian.

Minimalist looks

You are welcomed by a clean feature lineup that allows you to carry out most operations with minimal effort.
The virtual keyboard can be moved to any area of the screen, and you can make it remain on top of other applications, and this proves to be particularly useful especially when working with multiple tools at the same time. Additionally, you can make the utility show all characters or only some of them.

Configuration settings

Extra Keys is able to automatically copy the selected character to the clipboard, so you can easily paste it into other third-party applications. The best part about it is that it automatically detects the running utilities in a drop-down list and lets you select the one where you need to input the special characters.
Last but not least, you are allowed to pick the language used for displaying the special characters in the primary panel. Tests revealed that Extra Keys carries out a task quickly. It doesn’t eat up a lot of CPU and memory, so the overall performance of the computer is not hampered.

Bottom line

To sum things up, Extra Keys provides a simple yet efficient software solution for helping you insert accented and special characters in applications that offer support for text input.