Question: When using **Notes** I often find myself changing the color of the text (usually to blue or red) as an additional way to indicate emphasis (alongside *italics* and **bold**). 

The shortcut for displaying the available colors is **Command-Shift-C** but that still requires the user to use the mouse to click on a particular color. 

Does anyone know how I can add a single shortcut that will switch to a given color and then, when pressed again, switch back to black? (So it, in effect, works the same way the *italics* and **bold** shortcuts work).

I don't need to make a shortcut for *every* color--one for blue would do just fine. Any ideas?

Answer: 
This isn't **exactly** what you were asking for, but perhaps it is close enough.

Just below the menu place where you bring up the color picker (Format->Font->Show Colors) are two other menu items: Copy Style and Paste Style. This is what worked for me:

1. Select some text in your note
2. Manually set the color, like you do now (via Show Colors)
3. Set the cursor anywhere inside the colored text (don't select any text, just put the cursor there)
4. Choose Format->Font->Copy Style
5. From now on (including across relaunches of the Notes app) you can select the text you want to color and simply use the keyboard shortcut for Paste Style!

Hope this works well enough for you.
In TextEdit you can do something like:

```
tell application "System Events" to tell window 1 of process "TextEdit"
    set {x, y} to value of attribute "AXSelectedTextRange" of text area 1 of scroll area 1
end tell
tell application "TextEdit"
    set color of characters x thru y of document 1 to {65535, 0, 0}
end tell

```

I couldn't figure any way to do that in Notes though.