Learning Colemak

I hated the QWERTY keyboard layout from day one. The keys’ locations seemed arbitrary, and none of the common letter combinations were comfortable to type. My hands and fingers hurt after long typing lessons. And after years of practice (22 years at this point), my maximum typing speed reached nearly 70 words per minute, not including the frequent typos. During those years, I heard of alternative layouts, like Dvorak. But Dvorak is so different, and I did not want to start down the “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing” road again. So, on I typed, not satisfied with QWERTY, but not motivated to start again with some different layout.

Then 2020 came, and I learned about Colemak.

Note: this will likely be the last thing I write about, well, writing. I thought it would be a good exercise to shake the dust off the process before I got to more interesting things.

Analysis

As I started thinking about my main goal for the year, it occurred to me that spending more time on the keyboard might be a literal pain. I am not particularly prone to RSI, but I have experienced some pain before, like wrist soreness and occasionally tingly fingertips. I did not want to exacerbate that. So, to help with my writing goal and protect my money-makers, I took another look at alternatives to QWERTY.

Colemak was created in 2006, and was designed to solve a few key problems with QWERTY and other alternative layouts. To ease the learning curve, Colemak layout maintains many key position from QWERTY. But, where it makes changes, it aims to put common keys in more reachable positions.

Here’s the frequency key map for the QWERTY keyboard layout (darker means more frequently typed):

Note how many of the common characters are not on the Home Row. Also note that the left hand is responsible for the majority of common characters. Between hands, the keys are not distributed evenly, and many of the common keys require movement from the Home Row to type. The right hand is also set up to have uncommon letters directly below the finger tips. Unfortunate.

Now, compare the above map to the Colemak layout:

The proportion of words that can be typed without moving from the Home Row increases dramatically. More hits on the home row means less wrist and finger movement. Less movement means less strain. Less strain means healthy, happy tendons and joints.

The Colemak layout also aims to make changes so that common key chords use both hands efficiently. Take a look:

Note how many of the vowels are clustered directly under the fingers of the right hand. For the left hand, common consonants are clustered under the left hand.

Also note the keys associated with keyboard shortcut keys, like cut, copy, and paste (X, C, and V, respectively). Of the keys that stayed in the same place, those used for common keyboard shortcuts were preserved. Compare that to the default Dvorak layout, where you need to re-learn those shortcuts as well:

Between the two alternatives of Dvorak and Colemak, I decided to take the plunge with Colemak. I did a final typing speed test (~68 WPM in January) in QWERTY, then started on my journey.

Setup

For macOS, the setup was easy. In System Preferences > Keyboard, there is a tab for Input Sources. Clicking the + in the bottom-left corner opens a sheet, where you can search for “colemak”. Select the layout, click “Add”, then select it in the list. I found it helpful to also check the box for “Show Input menu in menu bar”, so I could switch back to QWERTY as needed. Once checked, this menu becomes visible in the menu bar:

As for teaching myself, I used a free, Stallman-approved application gtypist, and practiced the lessons for Colemak. I installed it via homebrew – brew install gtypist

With more foresight, I might have chosen something more … handsome? Perhaps KeyKey? Whatever.

For iOS, the setup was less obvious. There is no built-in option to make the onscreen keyboard use the Colemak layout. To get that, you need to install a third-party keyboard. Since I do not use those, I stopped there. But, I do have a hardware keyboard for my iPad. Luckily, there is a setting for enabling that as well.

In the Settings app, open General > Keyboards > Hardware Keyboard, and the first option. Scroll to select “Colemak”, then that’s it.

From that point, I was ready to go on my main devices.

Results

Six months in and I still have a ways to go before I am up to my old speeds. I am at about 55 words per minute, and haven’t had any pain or tingling since I got comfortable with the layout. The first month or so was tough. I was switching between the two layouts just to prevent productivity loss. As I got more comfortable, I needed to switch less and less, until finally I was fully on the new layout. Each month saw about 10% increase in speed, but that is starting to taper off. By year’s end, I should be back to my old speeds or close to it, without the associated strain.

There were a few interesting learnings. One is that I have partially lost the ability to touch-type in QWERTY. This started to happen after about two months, so there was a time where I was TERRIBLE at typing in both. Truly stressful. Strangely, if I stared at my hands, I could return to my normal speed. Another interesting note is that my ability to type on my on-screen keyboard did not change at all. So, it seems that thumb-typing and touch typing get stored in different parts of the brain, perhaps.

Overall, I am glad I took the plunge. Will you?