Create a Global Shortcut for a Single Letter

The "w" key on my MacBook Pro broke due to water damage. Currently I am copy and pasting the letter whenever I need that, but I would prefer to be able to press a keyboard shortcut to type it.

The shortcut needs to be available no matter the app; I would prefer the shortcut to be control + option (just those two keys) but if that's not possible then I'll settle for something else.

I tried setting a shortcut through the settings app, but I couldn't figure out how to 1) bind a single letter and 2) have the shortcut available globally.

I'm running Yosemite 10.10.3

BetterTouchTool is another great example.

Download BTT from here. Once you have it open go to the keyboard option and enter in your shortcut (I chose opt+ctrl+z since that should be an uncommon shortcut). After that you then set your 'trigger predefined action' to 'paste custom text' and paste in your 'w'.

Whenever you need to write a 'w' you can now press opt+ctrl+z.

One relatively simple method is to assign a text input that is then converted into "w" when you type your sequence.

I have chosen to type "(v)" that is converted to "w", but you can choose what suits you best (and what you can remember).

Open Keyboard-Text pref in the System Preferences, as described in this Apple Support page.

Click on the + sign to add a new item.

Now first type your choice, then paste a "w" in the right column.

It will work on almost all OS X apps, but won't work on web pages like this one.

Buscar's answer gives you a good option.

Another way that you can do this is to show the Keyboard Viewer which you can access from the menu bar. It will show up as a flag if you set it to display that way next to the volume icon.

Then all you need to do is mouse click the W when you need to use it.

UPDATE

A universal keyboard option would be to use a clipboard manager. If you read this article it will tell you more about them. From the article it says that they all have a way of favoriting a particular past and assigning it to a key combination like command + 1, etc.

UPDATE 2

bjbk gave me an idea. You could get one of the wireless blue-tooth keyboards that Apple ships with iMacs. Then you just connect via blue-tooth and brand new keyboard, and it slips in the same pocket as a laptop. I have seen many people pair these with iPads.