Arrow Symbols

There is no standard shortcut on Windows or Mac for most arrows, which is why copying is the usual approach. Some editors turn a hyphen and a greater-than sign into an arrow automatically, but that is autocorrect rather than the keyboard.

The double arrow conventionally means implication in logic and mathematics. For a menu path, a step sequence, or a before-and-after, the single arrow is the right one.

In filenames usually yes. In code they are safe inside strings and comments, but never inside identifiers unless the language explicitly allows Unicode names, and even then it hurts readability.

The four basic directions are in nearly every font and render everywhere. The rarer decorative arrows can fall back to a box on old systems, so prefer the basic set for anything public.