Thumb-Key

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About

Thumb-Key is a privacy-conscious smart keyboard, made specifically for your thumbs.

It features a 3x3 grid layout, as many older phones had, and uses swipes for the less common letters. Initial testing shows that you can reach ~25 words per minute after a day of use.

Instead of relying on profit-driven, privacy-offending word and sentence prediction for accuracy, as do most popular phone keyboards like Gboard and Swiftkey, Thumb-Key uses large keys with predictable positions, to prevent your eyes from hunting and pecking for letters.

As the key positions get ingrained into your muscle memory, eventually you'll be able to appromixate the fast speeds of touch-typing, your eyes never having to leave the text edit area.

This project is a follow-up to the now unmaintained (and closed-source) MessageEase Keyboard, which is its main inspiration.

founded 2 years ago

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What's your thumbkey wpm, and how does it compare to a standard qwerty keyboard? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For some background, I'm a huge fan of alternative keyboards and layouts, I've been using florisboard since it got the nalmy layout and swipe typing, and switched to thumbkey shortly after it came out.

I recently have been purging my phone of unused apps and even though I always use thumbkey, I ran out of low hanging fruit and decided to compare my wpm with thumbkey and the default qwerty grapheneos keyboard. Turns out, both are ~40-44 wpm, which is definitely good (the average is 30), but given that I've used thumbkey so long I was a bit surprised it was the same speed as a keyboard layout I've only used a handful of times in years (I don't use qwerty on desktop either).

I just realized I haven't tested one hand mode, so I'll edit the post with those results, but it got me curious to see what other peoples speeds are with thumbkey vs qwerty. If you share, it would be also interesting to know how long you've been using thumbkey

edit: one handed is where thumbkey really shines. Not only was it a lot more comfortable and smooth, it also hit 38 wpm, whereas qwerty was 27. Looks like thumbkey is here to stay on my phone, thanks for the great keyboard!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

My wpm is probably slower on thumbkey but I like being able to type whole sentences with one hand. A lot easier than using both.

Just tested.

42wpm on thumbkey (one handed) 63wpm qwerty (two handed)

Which this is after one test so who knows...