Can you recommend a cheap split keyboard? I’m not sinking 300$ to discover I hate it
Keychron has a cheap one
180£ isn’t cheap
This is just ads with extra steps
So is this the new trend after 60% mechanical keyboards, ultrawide monitors or immutable distros ?
Maybe it would improve my typing speed, but I’ve been using a conventional keyboard layout for so long now, I’m fine with where I’m at. Almost thirty years of muscular memory made it “hard coded” in my hands.
Sawme here! Honmestly I dom"t thinkl I coukd ever go vack tp a mormal keyboard ¶¶¶¶
I think one of my favorite keyboards ever was a Microsoft “Natural” keyboard. I think they were available in the mid ’90s or so. Not quite a real split keyboard, but the ergonomics were great. I think I gave it away…it was great for typing, but I wanted a simpler keyboard for gaming.
Fun fact: that’s Elijah Wood and it’s his first film role
As long as it’s got mech switches and can run a qwerty layout I’m happy
That’s ok, insanity comes in many forms.
When I was a kid, I got my hands on a PS/2 Y-adapter and so typed on two keyboards - left hand on one on my desk, right hand on one on a keyboard tray. I don’t know what my typing speed and accuracy were then, but a few years back an entire office of people tried to beat me in a typing test and couldn’t. Since then I’ve taken a typing test on a laptop while sitting in a hotel bed and gotten a score of 158 with, IIRC, 98.2% accuracy. (This was my best score but even since then all of my typing evaluations have gone well.)
I also use a trackball as exclusively as my environment allows, including while gaming (other than Minecraft). I’m not remotely a pro, but among my peers I tend to score highly in, for example, FPS’.
I’m not trying to brag; there are many better than I in both categories. The reason I bring these up is to demonstrate that something being the convention doesn’t automatically make it better and something being unfit for your preferences doesn’t make it inferior.
edit: AFAIK, I only have one left hand.
Which trackball? I was looking at them the other day but couldn’t decide
My favorite has always been the Kensington Orbit. Probably a lot of people - even those who like Trackballs - would disagree, but I’ve been happily using these for around 25 years. Except in Minecraft.
Why are you so vehemently opposed to the use of trackballs in minecraft?
I wouldn’t characterize it as vehemence, but rather a combination of consistency and honesty. People are fairly consistently surprised at my enthusiasm for gaming with trackballs, as though it’s automatically a detriment; I don’t find it to be so, except in Minecraft, so I don’t want to represent it as other than it is.
With the style of trackball I use - ball in the middle, left and right click on their respective sides of the ball - and the way I use it - thumb on left click, index and middle finger on the ball, ring and pinky on right click - right clicking can be a stressor. This isn’t a problem when tapping once or holding, such as when engaging a scope; but when repeatedly right clicking, it tires whatever muscles and tendons run between the outside of my hand and my shoulder, which already has its own problems.
Minecraft is the only game I play that requires me to repeatedly right click. (I know that now you can right click and drag to place lots of blocks, but that hasn’t always been true and doesn’t really allow for precision in my experience.) Therefore, it is the only game to which I feel my trackball is not well suited.
Have you considered remapping that control away from right click?
I just want The Wheel.
One of Jobs’ many failures was not getting this into market.
Here’s what I want: tiny, one handed bluetooth chord keyboard.
For typing on my phone. Can someone make one?
Aren’t there hundreds? Like this one? Or maybe I don’t know what you mean by “chord” keyboard, or you want more tiny?
(tangent to your question because someone already answered) I think that courtroom stenographers (people who type up what’s said) use special chording keyboards. I’ve also been to a few events where there has been someone transcribing things in real time for accessibility purposes, and they also use a cool looking chording keyboard. It takes some learning, but the max typing speed is way faster than any conventional keyboard could manage — which is why skilled people use them for transcribing stuff
A brand that I’m aware of that does them is Charachorder.
A chord keyboard uses combinations of keys, like chords on a piano. You have fewer keys so you can type with one hand. I’m not 100% serious about it, learning curve would be horrendous. But it would be interesting to try. I used blackberry for a long time and I hate screen keyboards.
And yes, looks like I found one while looking for examples :) It’s $175 on ebay, bit expensive.
you can make a ferris sweep. you would just choose which side you’d want and setup your layout with QMK. If you want Bluetooth, just use the nice! Nano controller. A coworker built one. It’s tiny, about the size of your hand. He would also carry it around in his pockets and connect through USB to his phone for emails.
The only problem is he customized the hell out of the layout. I think he used Colemak. His layers kinda looked like this:
He said he had trouble using regular keyboards after getting used to it. He always had to carry it around with him.
Yeah, that’s a lot of work with tools I have no idea with. Definitely a fun project but I don’t have the time.
I built and configured an Arkenswoop some time in 2023. It’s really nice. However… I have gotten quite fast on a conventional keyboard just by using it over the years, and re-learning that is just so tedious. Every time I try, something with a deadline comes up, and I switch back “temporarily”.
Anyone have experience overcoming this?
I’m going through this currently trying to find a privacy respecting Android keyboard.
Latest effort is Futo, recommended by a coworker. So far, I don’t like it.
As a fellow Futo user: it’s not great out of the box. My biggest recommendations are:
- under Languages and models, download all the voice models (if you use those), transformers, and wordlists you can for your languages
- if you use multiple languages, set the check on “multilingual typing” for ALL of those languages
- this is probably the biggest one: in text prediction -> Advanced Parameters, DRASTICALLY change the values. The original ones are 3.4 and 4.0 for LLM strength and autocorrect threshold, mine are currently set at 28.5 and 0.8, respectively. This takes the autocorrect from “occasionally working” to “as good as SwiftKey” for me.
- Keyboard and Typing -> Long Press -> Show hints. Could not find that for ages so thought I’d add it here.
Also, two super useful shortcuts: you can press the space-bar and move your finger around to move the pointer; and the same for backspace to fine-control what to delete.
Hope this helps, but if not… What additional gripes do you have with it?
This seems like a good starting point. Thank you for the recommendations; I’ll reach out with potential future gripes.
I switched to a new key layout and was slowed down for like a month, and almost every day I could literally feel myself speeding back up. It was such a cool experience, and one that I imagine has beneficial like neural effects, that sometimes I think about switching it up just for fun.
I’d suggest just sticking with it. I now use English, German, and my custom Workman layout at home without any issue switching between them. Practice makes perfect and cause a bunch of work and fun things encourage typing a lot, practice comes easy and getting back to your normal speed happens quickly.
Picking a new layout like Workman or Dvorak where you can feel the benefits, plus a split keyboard’s ergonomic benefits, and I think anyone would struggle to go back (assuming they do it for a month and give it a fair shake).
That sounds great. I think I’ve given it more than a month overall, but probably never longer than a week at a time. Guess I’ll have to have my SO hide my normal keyboard lol
Ya, I personally didn’t swap between two different ones during that time and I remember the first time u went back to a single board qwerty keyboard I struggled for less than an hour and then the muscle memory kicked in. I think my wires get crossed when I jumped between the two while learning and I decided to just stick with the one until I had “recovered” and that really helped.
Good luck!
I have had to use swedish (various), english, american, french and german keyboards, I have to look at the keyboard when I type :-/
Maybe I should just go DVORAK or something and always carry one with me…
As somebody who fully switched to Dvorak about 10 years ago, it has its benefits, but man oh man, does it bring out the shitty programmers who don’t realize that anything other than US QWERTY exists.
Where’s the rest of the keys? Also these things give off Nintendo Power Glove vibes.
It uses layers, the same way a phone keyboard has a separate layer for numbers and symbols. Holding down one of the three thumb keys on either side activates a new layer. Since you can use your thumb and fingers at the same time, there’s no lose in typing speed. Indeed, the layout puts numbers and symbols closer to the home row on a layer than using a physical number number.
For all symbols, you would have needed a shift-modifier to access those before. With this design, the symbols are closer but use a layer switch key instead of a shift key to access them.
Everyone who uses a phone keyboard has learned a new compact keyboard layout. It’s not so hard.
I love the Power Glove… It’s so bad.
Every Power Glove sold should have come with one complimentary Fred Savage
Hear me out, take the optic sensor from a mouse and put it on the bottom of one of those boards. Then you wouldn’t have to move your hand to use a mouse.
I’ve used plenty of ergo keyboards and fancy layouts, but as soon as I try to use a regular keyboard I have to re-learn how to type and it really halts any productivity.
This sort of thing may be nice if you only ever use one computer or you’re willing to pack around your keyboard.
Even still, I never liked ergo boards enough to think it’s worth the effort, especially considering being useless on other keyboards once I’m used to ergo.
Now I just stick to a 75% or TKL. Keeps me versatile.
I don’t have this experience, I am briefly confused for a second and then it’s fine, are you sure this lasts more than like 30 seconds?
When I’m forced into a qwerty situation it’s not just 30 seconds, I simply can’t touch-type qwerty and my current qwerty skills are way slower than 25 years ago where I had reached peak seven-and-a-half-fingers hunt-and-peck performance. In principle I should know where all the keys are, still, I can’t find them without looking. Somewhat similarly, I don’t really know where keys are with dvorak when my fingers aren’t on the home row but I am faster finding them on a touch display than finding qwerty keys. Also dvorak is nice on the smartphone your thumbs alternate more often.
TKL FTW BTW!
