UnicodeInjectorForInDesign

Script: use keyboard shortcuts to easily insert one or more Unicode characters into InDesign text.

How-to video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO97JmZ9jEk

How it works

You don't configure this script through a dialog or preferences file. Instead you make a copy of UnicodeInjector.jsx, rename the copy to encode what it should insert, and drop it into your InDesign Scripts folder. InDesign's normal Scripts panel / keyboard-shortcut mechanism then does the rest: double-click the script (or hit its assigned shortcut) with a text cursor active, and it inserts the character(s) encoded in its filename.

Installing

1. First click the <> Code button on the main Github page and select 'Download ZIP' from the dropdown menu.
2. Decompress the zip file
3. Copy dist/UnicodeInjector.jsx into your InDesign 'Scripts Panel' folder (right-click the 'User' folder in the Scripts panel and choose 'Reveal in Explorer'/'Reveal in Finder').
4. Double-click it once from the Scripts panel. You'll be prompted for a name — this makes a renamed copy that is now configured to insert whatever you encoded in the name.
5. Optionally assign a keyboard shortcut to the new copy via Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts...
6. Repeat for as many characters/strings as you want.

Examples

Script filename	Inserts
U+200A Hair space.jsx	hair space
U+2011 Non-breaking hyphen.jsx	non-breaking hyphen
U+1F600 Grinning face.jsx	😀
"before%n%nafter" Insert text.jsx	two-line literal text

Descriptive text in the filename (e.g. "Hair space", "Insert text") is ignored — only the recognized codes/literals are interpreted.

Supported filename syntax

• U+nnnn — 1 to 6 hex digits, e.g. U+0041, u+20eF
• 0xnnnn — 1 to 6 hex digits, e.g. 0x0041, 0X61
• 0dnnnnn — 1 to 7 decimal digits, e.g. 0d65, 0D97
• "literal text" or 'literal text'
• Escapes inside quoted text: %n (newline), %r (carriage return), %t (tab), %% (literal %), %', %"

You can mix multiple codes/literals in one filename, e.g. U+0061 U+0062.jsx inserts "ab". Add spaces between adjacent U+/0x/0d codes so the parser doesn't read extra digits into the previous one.

Full documentation, including notes on where to look up Unicode code points, is in the header comment of UnicodeInjector.jsx itself — right-click the script on the Scripts panel and choose 'Edit Script' to read it.

Tested with

• InDesign 2024 / 2025 / 2026
• macOS and Windows
• ExtendScript .jsx scripts run from the Scripts panel