shortcut for text string

Hello Trina527,

To my knowledge, I don't think you can replace the function of existing keys. You can change what they do.. For example, you could change Show Spotlight search (Command + Space) to another keyboard combination, maybe (Command + "). I could be wrong, but I believe that's it.

You can do text replacements, but this would try to autocorrect everywhere.

1. Open Settings
2. Scroll down and click Keyboard
3. Click Text Replacements

If these numbers have a specific meaning or abbreviation you could use that as the key (replace) and the number as the value (with).

Example:

Replace: EmpID

With: 93052

Now whenever you type EmpID (Employee ID), the keyboard would suggest changing it to 93052. Please keep in mind these should sync across all of your Apple devices, so it would appear on iPhone and in other applications as well. Not just certain programs.

Whatever program you're using might have shortcut options that support this feature.

Certainly works a treat without coding. I thought the minimum trigger characters was 2, but in Ventura 13.4.1, a single \ character works to prompt for the numeric string replacement (example in Pages v13.1):

Any key (except esc) will insert the string.

Apple has more on this at: Replace text and punctuation in documents on Mac - Apple Support

Trina527 wrote:

The numeric string is constant. I'd like to be able to press one key instead of five,

Have you tried using Apple's text replacement feature already suggested? Set the trigger to backslash and it is pretty fast (type space after the trigger)

Confirm from the Apple () menu > About This Mac panel, what version of macOS you are currently using.

Is that numeric string constant, are you reading it from a file or database, is this interactive for you to manually input a number string, or does it need to be an automatic random 5-digit numeric string each time it is invoked?