-->Switching to Colemak | Pedro Alves<br>I’ve always been a fast typer, easily reaching the 100wpm mark when doing a typing test, so I’ve never really felt like my typing speed was holding me back. What I never really learned to touch-type properly, and so I’ve accumulated some rather nasty habits that have been leaving me with aching fingers after a lot of typing. In partiular, despite being right-handed, I do almost all of my typing with my left hand, and basically only use my pinky in my right hand (honestly, it’s a wonder I ever managed to hit those speeds…)

So I wanted to learn to touch type properly and get rid of these habits that were on track to giving me RSI. But despite how many times I tried forcing myself to use the “correct” fingerings for my keyboard, they never stuck, and I kept coming back to my awful keyboard posture.

Looking more into touch typing and ergonomic keyboards, I decided to try switching to a better keyboard layout than QWERTY. I’d tried this in the past with Workman, but it never stuck, and I wanted to give it another shot. Looking through various reddit threads and blog posts lead me to the [Colemak-DH], which is supposed to be a better variant of the Colemak keyboard layout without some of the drawbacks of Workman.

I am writing this blog post as a sort of diary as I get used to switching to this new layout, so let’s get started!

Day 0

Typing speed : 22wpm

So as to not go in cold turkey and leaving me unable to work until I got used to the new layout, I started out by using keybr.com, which teaches you the keyboard layout progressively by starting with the home row and unlocking the next letter once you’re accurate enough with the existing letters.

It has the very useful features of emulating a keyboard layout, which meant I could try out Colemak-DH without having to install it on my computer. Another nice feature is that it shows the keyboard at the bottom, color-coded with the correct fingers, which is a great reference while I don’t memorize the layout.

I found the progression a bit slow, and it took me 4 days to unlock all letters doing ~20 minutes per day per day, but it definitely helped me get a grip on the layout.

Days 1-4

Typing speed : 45wpm

Over these days, I slowly worked over the lessons on keybr, without switching my main keyboard from QWERTY. In the end, I got a decent typing speed, but I’m still making a lot of mistakes, with an accuracy rate of around 95%. That might not sound like a lot, but it means one in twenty letters is incorrect, which leads to a lot of corrections and a signifficant hit to my speed.

Day 5 - Actually using Colemak

Typing speed : 50wpm

Ok, enough exercises, let’s actually use Colemak as my keyboard layout.

Installation

My work machine is a Macbook Pro, and while macOS does come with a Colemak layout, it does not have the DH mod by default, so I needed to install it. There are layout files available in ColemakMods, and they can be installed with homebrew!

brew install --cask colemak-dh # Install Colemak-DH<br>After this, I needed to sign out and back in to have the layout show up in the settings. I set it up so that the QWERTY layout was still set up, and I could switch between them using the globe key or Ctrl+Space.

I did not move around the keycaps on my keyboard. This is my work laptop, and Apple’s keycaps don’t really seem designed to be removed, so I’m rather afraid of breaking them. I’ll probably print a layout reference to keep around.

Experience report

So, at the end of the first day using Colemak, I’ve got a lot of pain points. The QWERTY muscle memory is pretty ingrained, and it takes a bit for my brain to “switch” and I start writing a little faster. I’m doing relatively fine with the letters at the end of the day as I’m writing this (albeit a lot slower, with all the corrections I’m having to do!), but it turns out you use a keyboard for a lot more than just writing letters…

Keyboard shortcuts

I thought this would be a bigger pain point than it actually was, honestly! Things like copy, paste, undo, have all been fine after a few attempts, though I do keep opening new browser windows (Cmd+N) when I meant to select the URL (Cmd+L). Since these are mostly mnemonics based rather than position based, I think in a few days I’ll adapt quick enough.

Modifier keys

This isn’t really related to Colemak, but as I’ve mostly managed to use the proper fingers for pressing letter keys, I realized I basically only use the right shift key and that makes typing some capital letters on the right hand side really tricky if I am to always use the correct finger. Since I’ve been relying on the finger positions for remembering the layout, trying to use a different finger for uppercase letters because my pinky is occupied has resulted in considerably more typos in uppercase than in lowercase.

I’ve seen online the suggestion to use sticky keys, but for now I’m trying to be mindful to use the shift key on the opposite hand as the one...