As noted in the default test, this site is by ZSA, a keyboard company. Their boards are pricey, but excellent. I have both their Moonlander, which sits on my desk at home, and their Voyager, which I went with quieter key switches (brown rather than blue) for taking on the go. Their boards are very comfortable; I highly recommend considering split, columnar keyboards like what they offer if you spend most of your day at a computer.
As a side, I switched to Dvorak when I first bought my Moonlander about 6 years ago. I have only used split keyboards with Dvorak, and I have only used traditional staggered keyboards with QWERTY. My muscle memory is well isolated between the two, and I have no trouble switching between them (though as it has now been many years since I regularly used a physical QWERTY keyboard, my WPM on one is definitely lower than it used to be).
I went with quieter key switches (brown rather than blue)
If you like tactile switches, try the Golden Kiwi from MoErgo [1] (also Choc v1, so fits the Voyager). It pulled of the near-impossible combination of a profound tactile bump, with only 42gf tactile force, while being much smoother and silent than Browns or Sunsets.
Only disclaimer I should add is that I was one of the beta testers for the switch. But I can't go back to anything else.
I second the recommendation. I use the Voyager, and it's a delight! I switched when I was suffering from a lot of wrist pain, and it's never come back. I only wish they offered a wireless version for a cleaner desk.
I loved it! As soon as I start to do these things, I get stressed and become much worse! Anyone remember the car game where you raced against others by typing? That was fun but forgotten the link.
I had some typing classes in middle school but they never stuck. The only reason I became a reasonably fast and confident typer—which ended up being amazing for everything from work (emails and Slack more than code!) to HN to writing a lot on Quora—was Type Racer :P
It's amazing how much easier gamification can make it for me to stick with something.
Graphite[0] is my keyboard layout of choice for anyone looking to switch. Huge fan! Had previously used QWERTY and Colemak. These types of sites help tremendously when learning a new layout.
The thought of learning a new keyboard is kind of scary. Is there any true difference? 30 years of typing on a QWERTY here. I wonder how long it would take to get to 75WPM on graphite. A decade?
Not nearly a decade. There are great resources that start you with just a few keys and add more over time. Once you have all 26 letters, it’s time to move on to MonkeyType or an equivalent. You will absolutely have reduced output for a few weeks. I notice a huge difference compared with QWERTY when typing on a MacBook all day. You should not switch layouts for speed, but rather for comfort. The GitHub link contains a few interesting graphics about efficiency if you’re interested, but the very high-level result is sizable comfort gains.
Probably around one month. Using Colemak Mod-DH on an external keyboard and QWERTY on my Macbook. My brain is switching automatically, cannot use them in a reverse order.
It does some, uh, interesting things with the Dark Reader extension, though, at least with the default light theme darkened by Dark Reader. Errors are displayed. Corrections are highlighted. But there's no cursor shown, and no progress displayed for completed input.
It felt very strange typing like that. I somehow managed to get 65 wpm in that mode, but it was weird the whole time -- like my eye/brain combo had to focus on only one word at a time, without any lookahead, since I was typing into the void. It felt arduous in ways that are otherwise difficult to describe.
Switching to the site's dark theme and turning off Dark Reader seemed so much better, and was much faster. I got a fairly-lazy 88 wpm on the first go with it running with its intended level of feedback.
But the interesting part is that I was able to notice that my eyes wander all over the place while typing. I found that I looking several words ahead, and scanning the context, and watching the progress, and that my eyes don't move linearly at all.
I suppose that's a thing that I've been doing for decades. But I definitely never noticed it until Dark Reader made this website unintentionally run on hard mode and thereby provided a contrasting experience.
Weird stuff. I'm reluctant to call it a bug; instead, it seems like maybe it is a feature that could be further developed. It might help to train for accurately entering long arbitrary phrases (like passphrases, license keys, and credit card numbers) where visual feedback is deliberately limited.
Two things I'd love: to try out this keyboard before buying it (I keep repeating myself, but I'd love a retail keyboard trying out store in NYC - Micro Center isn't cutting it)
And two - does anyone know of a keyboard that has some-trackpad-like (or pure scrolling..?) device pretty much where the trackpad would be on a laptop?
I spend time working on my laptop, get used to scrolling / moving the mouse "under" the keyboard (ie closer to me) using the trackpad, and when I go back to my desk with my full sized keyboard, I see myself reaching for a phantom trackpad.
This is really cool! Although a little disappointed that it punished me for using an emdash instead of a dash when an emdash would've been syntactically correct :)
As a side, I switched to Dvorak when I first bought my Moonlander about 6 years ago. I have only used split keyboards with Dvorak, and I have only used traditional staggered keyboards with QWERTY. My muscle memory is well isolated between the two, and I have no trouble switching between them (though as it has now been many years since I regularly used a physical QWERTY keyboard, my WPM on one is definitely lower than it used to be).
If you like tactile switches, try the Golden Kiwi from MoErgo [1] (also Choc v1, so fits the Voyager). It pulled of the near-impossible combination of a profound tactile bump, with only 42gf tactile force, while being much smoother and silent than Browns or Sunsets.
Only disclaimer I should add is that I was one of the beta testers for the switch. But I can't go back to anything else.
[1] https://www.moergo.com/pages/go60-key-switches
I landed on the Ambients Twilight silent switches https://lowprokb.ca/collections/switches/products/ambients-s...
[1] https://imgur.com/a/zsa-moonlander-2ACNkDc
It's amazing how much easier gamification can make it for me to stick with something.
We can adapt (steal) this idea (thanks vibe coding) and practice our own topcis of interest and learning daily!
[0] - https://github.com/rdavison/graphite-layout
It does some, uh, interesting things with the Dark Reader extension, though, at least with the default light theme darkened by Dark Reader. Errors are displayed. Corrections are highlighted. But there's no cursor shown, and no progress displayed for completed input.
It felt very strange typing like that. I somehow managed to get 65 wpm in that mode, but it was weird the whole time -- like my eye/brain combo had to focus on only one word at a time, without any lookahead, since I was typing into the void. It felt arduous in ways that are otherwise difficult to describe.
Switching to the site's dark theme and turning off Dark Reader seemed so much better, and was much faster. I got a fairly-lazy 88 wpm on the first go with it running with its intended level of feedback.
But the interesting part is that I was able to notice that my eyes wander all over the place while typing. I found that I looking several words ahead, and scanning the context, and watching the progress, and that my eyes don't move linearly at all.
I suppose that's a thing that I've been doing for decades. But I definitely never noticed it until Dark Reader made this website unintentionally run on hard mode and thereby provided a contrasting experience.
Weird stuff. I'm reluctant to call it a bug; instead, it seems like maybe it is a feature that could be further developed. It might help to train for accurately entering long arbitrary phrases (like passphrases, license keys, and credit card numbers) where visual feedback is deliberately limited.
Edit: found that functionality. Nice!
And two - does anyone know of a keyboard that has some-trackpad-like (or pure scrolling..?) device pretty much where the trackpad would be on a laptop?
I spend time working on my laptop, get used to scrolling / moving the mouse "under" the keyboard (ie closer to me) using the trackpad, and when I go back to my desk with my full sized keyboard, I see myself reaching for a phantom trackpad.
Thanks!
19.80% Accuracy
320 Errors
Thinkpad keyboard.
https://monkeytype.com/