Ergonomic Keyboard Layouts

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

There are a lot of keyboard layouts today. There's standard QWERTY, and there's the more efficient Dvorak. But a lot people are making a lot layouts still. Some are specialized on a particular language (e.g. German, Spanish), some aim for easier transition from QWERTY, some are designed for programers. This page is a list of them.

Keyboard Layout Heatmap

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 a n i h d y u j g c v p m l s r x o ; k f . , b t / w e q \ [ ] ' - = z ` ␣
  • Layouts:
  • European Layouts:
  • Non-Latin Layouts:
  • Character Frequency:

Bigger circle means more frequently used.

QWERTY (1870)

The good old QWERTY, familiar to everyone. The QWERTY layout came from typewriters, around 1870s. See Keyboard Design Flaws.

[画像:qwerty layout heatmap 2024年04月28日]
qwerty layout heatmap 2024年04月28日

Dvorak (1936)

The Dvorak layout, the first layout designed for efficiency, in year 1936.

Microsoft Windows bundled Dvorak in year 1995. Mac did in Mac OS 8 in year 1998.

[画像:dvorak layout heatmap 2024年04月28日]
dvorak layout heatmap 2024年04月28日

Maltron Layout (1977)

Programer's Dvorak (1997)

Arensito (2001)

The Arensito Keyboard Layout, by Håkon Hallingstad, year 2001.

[画像:Arensito layout on kinesis 2gx]
Arensito layout on kinesis 2gx
[画像:Arensito layout yqpxx]
Arensito layout

Major points according to the author:

  • 8 most used characters in home row.
  • Minimizes repeated same finger.
  • Optimize bigrams and trigrams.
  • Minimizes use of pinkies.

Capewell (2005)

The Capewell layout is designed using a evolutionary algorithm to evolve the best possible layout. Capewell is designed by Michael Capewell. Released ~2005.

Capwell is very confusing. On their site they have several versions, and the site changes over the years, without clear indication of version and name.

[画像:capewell layout heatmap y4pqZ]
Capewell layout, year 2005.

Colemak (2005)

Colemak layout is the second most popular ergonomic layout after Dvorak Keyboard Layout.

Colemak layout popularized keyboard layout design craze, since 2005.

[画像:colemak layout 2024年04月22日 kmC]
colemak layout 2024年04月22日 kmC

Colemak DH (2014)

Colemak DH appeared in 2014. It is a improvement on Colemak, fixing the problem of right hand index finger moving too much to the center to press H.

[画像:colemak dh layout heatmap nNF]
colemak dh layout heatmap nNF

Asset (2006)

Asset layout is designed for easy transition from QWERTY. Designed by David Piepgrass in 2006.

15 keys are different from QWERTY.

[画像:Asset layout heatmap]
Asset layout heatmap

Workman (2010)

Workman layout began the idea that lateral movement for index finger is bad. (that is, index finger should not move to the middle much.) It is inspired by this problem from Colemak Layout (2005)

[画像:workman layout 2024年04月20日]
workman layout 2024年04月20日

QFMLWY (2011)

Carpalx is website that studies efficiency of keyboard layouts. The site began in 2007. By its algorithm, it comes up with the Carpalx QFMLWY layout, presumed to be the most efficient, according to how he calculates the score.

[画像:qfmlwy layout heatmap xNz]
qfmlwy layout heatmap xNz

Minimak (2012)

Minimak layout is created by Ted Lilley around 2012. Minimak is designed to be fastest to learn for QWERTY touch-typers. It only changes 4 keys, so that 2 of the most frequently used letters in English (e → 13%, t → 9%) are now on the home row, typed by the strong middle fingers. Minimak has other versions, with 8 keys change, then 12 keys change. The idea is that one can progressively adopt more efficient layout.

[画像:minimak layout heatmap Kq2]
minimak layout heatmap Kq2

Norman Layout (2013)

Norman layout is created by David Norman, published in 2013. It has a well designed homepage.

Norman layout is similar to Asset Layout. Norman layout is the result of study of all existing layouts. Its main claim is that it "keeps 22/26 letters in the normal use pattern of their QWERTY finger", and claims to be just as efficient as Dvorak, Colemak, Workman, etc.

In Norman layout, 15 keys are different from QWERTY.

Also, Norman layout, like many others, has a critical misconception, believing that the { X C V } keys are optimal for cut copy paste. In fact, these shortcuts get you Repetitive Strain Injury. 〔see Why ZXCV Undo Cut Copy Paste Keys Are Bad?〕

[画像:Norman layout heatmap GZM]
Norman layout heatmap GZM

qwpr (2013)

qwpr is designed by Jameson Quinn. It appeared in 2013.

qwpr changes just 11 keys from QWERTY, and lets you type many European language characters and Unicode symbols.

[画像:qwpr layout 2024年04月20日]
qwpr layout 2024年04月20日

Halmak (2016)

Halmak layout is designed by Nikolay Nemshilov, year 2016. It's created by using an evolution algorithm.

their site claims:

  • Build based on the real world hand movements analysis
  • Nearly maximal possible typing efficiency
  • Very low overall fingers movement distance
  • Very low same finger / same hand usage overheads
  • Very low overall horizontal hands movement
  • Highly symmetrical design that accounts for individual fingers strength
  • Designed with the modern, web based English in mind

These claims are not particularly meaningful. Every layout design since 2010 would claim the same.

[画像:halmak layout 2024年04月20日]
halmak layout 2024年04月20日

Beakl Layout (2016)

Beakl Layout began the idea that pinky keys should be avoided, even on the homerow.

[画像:beakl 15 layout 2024年04月20日]
beakl 15 layout 2024年04月20日

Engram (2021)

Engram Layout is new around 2021-03, designed by Arno Klein. The layout is designed based ergonomic science, for typing English language, using Google's ngram (bigram, trigram) text data as part of the design basis.

[画像:engram layout v2 2023年04月21日]
engram layout v2 2023年04月21日

Note that in engram layout, positions are optimized not just for letters, but also for numbers, symbols, and all punctuations, including the shifted character. For example, traditionally, shifted 2 is @, but on engram it is =.

Most other ergo layouts do not make such a change, except Programer's Dvorak. However, in Programer's Dvorak, they also optimized position for numbers, but engram does not.

Engrammer (Engram with Traditional Shift) (2023)

Engrammer layout is Engram with traditional shift. there are two advantage of this. (1) More compatibility when using traditional keyboards. (2) Avoid the problem of shortcuts that involve punctuations stop working, example: Ctrl+= or Ctrl++

Engrammer layout is created by Suraj N. Kurapati, on ~2023.

[画像:Engrammer layout 2024年04月20日]
Engrammer layout 2024年04月20日

Canary Layout (2022)

Designed by the keyboard layout community. It emphasize finger rolling motion, e.g. like typing asdf in QWERTY.

[画像:canary layout 2024年04月29日]
canary layout 2024年04月29日

More Layouts

Ineffectualness of Nerds on letter layouts

The keyboard letter layout guys, are mostly ineffectual nerds.

each's story is pretty much like this:

I tried A B C D E F G but they all have problems. Therefore, here is my new layout H, and it's the best of them all.

Innovations in Keyboard Letter Layout Design

some of them, are actual innovations.

  • Dvorak → introduced the idea of minimize finger movement distance and alternating hands concept.
  • Maltron → introduced putting the most frequently used letter e on a thumb key.
  • Colemak → introduced the idea of finger rolling and popularize the idea dvorak is not the king.
  • Carpalx (QFMLWY) → introduced the idea of scoring metric for designing a layout.
  • Workman → introduced the idea of avoiding lateral movement for index finger.
  • Beakl → introduced the idea of avoiding pinky, even on homerow.

Keeping Z X C V is Inefficient

Many layouts keep the {Z, X, C, V} keys in the same position as QWERTY, so that the {undo, cut, copy, paste} keys don't change. This is bad. This induces Repetitive Strain Injury. See: Why ZXCV Undo Cut Copy Paste Keys Are Bad?.

Thumb Keyboard Layouts

These are layouts designed for physical keyboard that have 4 or more thumb keys.

One-handed Dvorak Layouts

There are also a Dvorak layout for single left hand, and one for single right hand. see Dvorak keyboard layout

Ergonomic Layouts for Other Language

There are many ergonomic layouts for other languages.

there is also Turkish-F layout, which is ergonomic.

What is the Most Efficient Keyboard Layout?

A Ergonomic Layout Standard for All Languages

Another common problem is for non-English languages. For example, German, Spanish, French, and even Chinese and Japanese can benefit because many of their input methods use English alphabet.

〔see Pinyin Letter Frequency 拼音字母頻率〕

In these languages, usually there are few extra characters such as é that need to be typed. There are many standardized layouts for them (e.g. QWERTZ, AZERTY), but often they still requires you to type the special chars by a combination of key press using AltGraph or Compose key, and these layout usually do not consider ergonomics of letter frequency.

xah talk show, on keyboard layouts

[画像:xah talk show 2024年04月07日 vidthumb OadFHQYCzJE]

Acknowledgement

Thanks to the following people who have made useful comments.

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