Colemak is an inspiring keyboard layout, but doesn’t kill QWERTY for gaming
My partner Ash likes to bite the bullet.When I heard he was going to drop the QWERTY keyboard layout for efficiency Colemak keyboard layout (opens in new tab)I’m not surprised.
If Ash had to choose between climbing a mountain, or taking a longer excursion around the side, he would undoubtedly take the path of greatest resistance, just to see how things would pan out. It manifests in every aspect of his life, and while watching him painstakingly train himself to use the Colemak layout for months seems too Sisyphus to me, I do have a newfound respect for his determination.
Learning a new keyboard layout is hard. Remember the first time someone gave you a keyboard? It takes years of practice to master one, let alone the ability to use touch typing as I do now. Don’t mind learning it all over again, your native layout is still circling in your head.
My multilingual friends tell me that they sometimes think in English but speak German or Bulgarian and vice versa. Thinking in English and trying to ignore QWERTY muscle memory is another spatial problem that my synapses struggle to cope with.
According to the official website, Colemak’s focus is to provide “faster and easier” alternatives to the QWERTY and Dvorak keyboard layouts. About 100,000 people took up the challenge to convert, and it’s currently the third most popular typing layout in English.
The site claims that with QWERTY, you move twice as much as you do with Colemak, “with 16 times more jumps with the same hand”. For a more efficient layout, Colemak puts the most frequently used letters on the main row, which means you can type 35 times as many words simply by keeping your hands in the default position.
All this publicity really turned my partner around. He’s ready to give up his beloved QWERTY and try something new and exciting. In the first few months, it went surprisingly well.
First, he switched his home keyboard layout to reflect Colemak, or at least, he tried.
The Logitech G513 I’m sure the other half is using makes swapping keys very awkward, as each row of keys has a different height — something to consider if you’re thinking about switches — but he didn’t let that stop him.
He only changed a few key positions and continued to learn to type with this alien layout wholeheartedly. He found that his typing speed did improve in about 5 months, but it took quite a while to improve his accuracy. He now rounds with 95% accuracy, which is more than acceptable.
“2-3 months ago, I stopped thinking about where my fingers were good,” Ash said. So he managed to get good enough to touch typing within a few months.
Now, as someone who types every day on QWERTY for my work, I’m about 91% accurate at 32–45WPM, which is a good day (don’t tell my boss).So Ash managed to get his stats up to mine in 140+ sessions keyhero.com (opens in new tab). Impressive stuff.
However, all these successes are the result of total immersion in the Colemak lifestyle. He changed his phone layout and also his work keyboard layout. While the phone switch helped a little, he recalled that changing at work was a revelation. “Sure, typing emails was a hassle for the first few weeks, but at least when I was away there was no one to prank and leave my computer unlocked.”
Ash has been talking about Colemak’s advantages over QWERTY for a few months, but after a while he started to run into more hurdles. The fact that no one can type on his keyboard means I can’t enter my password on his computer, or pop up to change music while we’re listening through his settings. So while it’s great for deterring would-be pranksters, Colemak is certainly not for anyone who has to share a keyboard.
He finally crawled back to QWERTY, mostly for the convenience it brought to the game.
On the gaming side, there is also an issue with the game not registering the Colemak keyboard layout. Trying to change it to make playing the game less cumbersome is no easy task, especially those control schemes that he’s spent a long time tinkering with.
After a few months of Kolemark’s crush, poor Ash was finally defeated. At least on his home keyboard, he’s finally crawled back to QWERTY, mostly for the convenience it brings to gaming.Still, he’s fascinated by the layout and wants to get one WASD custom keyboard (opens in new tab) for future experiments.
He fully believes his posture has also improved while using the Colemak, and says his hands are less tiring typing all day. But despite its many health and efficiency benefits, it’s still hard to see widespread adoption of Colemak in this QWERTY-dominated world.
Convincing people to change when others around are stuck in old predicaments is difficult because of Colemak’s positivity BBC work life articles (opens in new tab) pointed out. It’s also unlikely that top keyboard makers will offer it as a replacement when it’s still a niche market.
The Colemak layout does come pre-installed on Mac (surprisingly) and Linux (not so), and more people move every day, so there’s room for change. But if it comes, it will be a slow and potentially very painful change.