Switching from QWERTY to Colemak and Back (opens in new tab)

I switched to Colemak "cold turkey" last year and I couldn't be happier now that the transition is complete. I too never got as fast as I did with qwerty but it's so much more comfortable that I don't care.

I probably made a mistake by not practising typing much on places like keybr.com and about three months in I was starting to think that I had made a horrible mistake because at that point I was slow at both qwerty and colemak but by six months I was totally happy that I stuck with it.

I didn't struggle much with keybindings but I did end up creating an alias cs='cd'. In terms of using other computers I got a programmable mechanical keyboard or I just hunt and peck in qwerty now.

That was similar to my experience with Dvorak, back in the early 90's. Having learned touch typing on qwerty on an IBM typewriter from high school, and learning/typing for several years, I thought I was pretty good typist, but in college, I had the nagging feeling I wanted to try something else, since my wrist didn't feel too good after a long typing session, and I wanted to get even faster.

It felt so weird learning to type in Dvorak layout, but I got used to it and after a month, I was typing ok, and within 2 months, I was probably typing the fastest I've ever been. It felt much easier to type physically and felt more effortless to type. The downside was that every time I went to type on someone else's computer, I just couldn't type on qwerty anymore. Some people just seem to have knack on being able to switch between layouts, but I just couldn't. Being an "expert" on computer as a software engineer, imagine people's surprise when I could barely locate a key... "So where is that B key again?" Also I couldn't use VIM no matter how I tried to remap the keys in vim. Eventually, I abandoned Dvorak for practical reason, and when I did, it took few weeks to get back to re-learning qwerty.

The secret is to learn an alternate keyboard layout on a keyboard with a different physical layout.

I switched to an ergodox when they came out with the Norman layout. (I started using a Lily 58 earlier this year with the same layout.)

I can still do decently on staggered layouts (with qwerty) when I need to.

I'm not a musician but I figure this is similar to playing different instruments.

I didn't find the switch to Colemak nearly as difficult as OP. The way I learned it was with some linux-based typing tutor at the time, where it introduces one letter/key at a time, with emphasis on touch typing (which is obviously important because most people aren't getting Colemak keycaps). I went cold turkey, spent 10-20 hours on a weekend, and could work well enough in Colemak the following Monday (probably 40-50 WPM). Then maybe a few weeks to 110 WPM, where my time waster during that period was doing typing tests.

Throughout, I never fully abandoned QWERTY. It was certainly difficult to switch between them, but my office environment was collaborative enough that not being able to maintain some level of competency in QWERTY really hurt.

Eventually, I switched back to QWERTY because there were just enough things annoying about "being different"--NOT because Colemak in itself was bad. Things like configuring keybindings for things like VIM, where half the shortcuts are positional (e.g. homerow navigation) but the other half are mnemonics (next) and now in Colemak they can't be both. And just in general, sharing your hardware with others and vice versa. Colemak was beautiful, but sometimes the imperfect standard is better than the perfect thing that nobody uses.

Switching back to QWERTY I was back to full speed in a few days. That, to me, is the biggest reason I'd encourage anyone to give Colemak a shot. You don't just lose your QWERTY muscle memory, it just hibernates a bit and is groggy when you wake it up.

I agree. I learned Dvorak about 15 years ago, and even though typing is much more comfortable, I wouldn't do it again.

I wish I knew about the increased cognitive overload. Sure, typing English and code is great, but once you get to shortcuts in different applications, things get rather ugly. I use multiple computers, and switching back and forth between QWERTY and Dvorak is no problem, but every time I switch to a different program I have to THINK about which layout I am using and because I never switch my keyboard keycaps, I have to think and LOOK which key I'm pressing.

Also Control/Command C, X, and V are impossible to do with one hand while holding your mouse unless you remap keys or create macros. It's a mess.

I've never felt comfortable about shortcuts ever since.

Amusingly, I just made the swap on my phone to be Colemak everywhere. :D

I'm curious on if it really matters. I made the switch for the same reason I would go between left and right handed mice. Mostly just to keep interested. And to see if I could. I've been happy with it, may change again soon. Not sure. That said, I have not focused on building speed up. Maybe if I was to try that more, I would care. I find as soon as I'm at 60wpm, I am at the point that I am not limited by typing at all.

> Colemak is pretty awesome if your goal isn’t to be the fastest typer. I really think it should be the default keyboard layout taught.

I've been using Colemak for about 14 years now. I can't say that I'm faster but haven't had a repeat of the wrist pain I lived with with QWERTY.

It's been a real boon to have Colemak available on macOS and Linux.

If Colemak were available out-of-the-box on Windows, I think that would double its adoption.

Are any Microsoft people reading this? If so, please file a ticket with the appropriate team ;-)

For those thinking of switching to Colemak, you might consider using the Tarmak method: [0]

It's a series of 5 intermediate keyboard layouts that each change just a few keys from QWERTY. So, instead of one big transition that takes weeks to learn, you have 5 smaller transitions, each of which you can learn in a weekend.

[0]: https://forum.colemak.com/topic/1858-learn-colemak-in-steps-...

I switched from QWERTY to Colemak about 5-10 years ago for a solid year or so.

My WPM decreased by around 25% and I actually found Colemak to be rather uncomfortable; with QWERTY (and DVORAK) you tend to alternate stroke between hands. Even if there is more finger travel, it just feels right to me.

Also, having a different layout than the peers around you is an absolute pain.

My conclusion is that having an alternative layout is not worth the marginal improvements if any it may offer. If I was forced to try another layout though, I would try DVORAK.

Colemak-DH is the true way https://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/

A downside with these off-QWERTY keyboard settings is that (as he mentioned) the shortcuts are often designed for QWERTY keyboards - things like X C V, sure X might be cut, and C is kinda copy, but V is not paste.

To really "go whole hog" you have to either remap the shortcuts to be the same positionally, or rethink the shortcuts from first principles.

After six years I am back to qwerty as well. https://maudlinruminations.com/posts/colemak_6years.html Those who don't want to increase my page hits

high level TL;DR: I chose convenience of qwerty being there everywhere and realizing that qwerty isn't really that bad.

If someone working at Apple reads this: it would be amazing if I could remap Capslock to Backspace without any third party tools in the Mac (there’s already an option for almost every key except backspace). Also if it would be possible at all on iOS that would also be nice.

There are games out there that help you learn the skill of switching quickly.

As at least one other person has commented, context acts as a switch even when you can't directly "find" the switch consciously. It isn't only the keyboard. I learned colemak on one keyboard while I continued with QWERTY on another, and it wasn't a big surprise that it was hard to do the reverse for a while. What did really surprise me was that I couldn't type QWERTY in the typing drill software I was using for Colemak, and I couldn't type Colemak in the online typing test where I was used to typing QWERTY! It wasn't a subtle effect, quite a dramatic speed plummet, especially in the former case - and just switching back to my normal text editor was enough to speed up my QWERTY again 30 seconds later!

I guess if you focus practice on finding that switch, for example with those games, that's just another skill you can learn like any other. Some people certainly have got very good at that with practice.

Bro made the classic mistake of trying Colemak when he should’ve tried Dvorak.

T. Dvorak User

I switched from Qwerty (40wpm) to workman (80wpm after a year) but ultimately I returned to Qwerty and now I'm again on 50wpm. It's not good at all and feels stupid compared to workman but I don't want to type using my two index fingers when I'm using systems other than my own. It felt stupid that I had to type using my two fingers with less than 20wpm speed whenever I was typing on someone else's machine. Only solution seems to be learning two keyboard at the same time but now I think I have already forgotten workman (When I returned to Qwerty I could only type with 20wpm speed while my previous speed was well above 40)

I went through a very similar experience on using keybr to learn Colemak last year. It was in anticipation of typing on a custom split ergo to improve efficiency.

I was really surprised by how easy it is to build up muscle memory, along with some decent speed/accuracy. However, I had to make a decision to unlearn most of my efforts and go back to QWERTY, as it was causing too much confusion switching between the two layouts. Colemak was also causing cramps between the shoulders and the neck on traditional staggered keyboards. Regardless, I am glad that I undertook this exercise, and occasionally do some tests for basic retention.

I've been using Colemak for a little bit more than a decade now. Super happy with it.

I switched while interning at a ~failing startup. I was a Canadian in the US, and had forgotten to plan to do stuff over Thanksgiving weekend. I had nothing to do, so I switched to Colemak over the weekend. I spent the weekend doing typing training videos, then spent the remaining ~1mo of my co-op term working (almost) entirely in Colemak. I wouldn't switch back to qwerty without a really compelling reason.

Years later, I'm super happy. I can use QWERTY under duress, but rather not.

I went through something similar where several of my work assignments put me in europe for couple of years.

Learning AZERTY and QWERTZ (especially for coding) was quite challenging but I got the hang of it quite quickly (just small changes from QWERTY - I almost wish there were a coding specific keyboard so you didn't have to hit shift for things like underscores, plus or the like - some of the european keyboard layouts were way easier (*, ! and other shift sequences are "native") while numerals!! require shift.

~20 year Dvorak user here. Comfort remains the chief benefit. I'm maybe faster than I was on QWERTY but not significantly.

I'm also a ~15 year Vim user, and I'm happy using its keys where Dvorak puts them even if the HJKL arrows are a little jumbled. To my muscle memory it's a solved problem.

If you're going to learn an alternative keyboard layout and also a modal editor like vim, kak, hx, etc. I suggest you find your keyboard layout happy place first and pursue editors second.

I type Dvorak all day at work, and Qwerty everywhere else, my brain can switch freely between the two no problem. I have no idea why this is possible, but it is.

I got a split columnar keyboard and switched to colemak-dh.

I really really love it. My two biggest pain points is that the keyboard is annoying to move so I can't take it everywhere, and my muscle memory is tied to my keyboard.

I use original vim mappings but I use a modifier key for home row arrows (with added benefit that it's now available in all programs).

I think I'll stay, it's comfy here. If I need to, I can take my keyboard elsewhere

I wonder if some of the perceived benefits of alternate layouts, like Dvorak and Colemak, are due to users being forced to consciously touch type.

the editor muscle memory thing is always the thing for me.. Even changing keyboard and not the key layout causes me issues.

I’ve wanted to try Colemak for years now, but living in a QWERTY world where I may have to operate on other keyboards, other machines, etc., has discouraged me. Maybe Colemak is better, but the benefit it provides isn’t enough to entice me, apparently.

Why not use Dvorak instead? It's built in to all the OSs and based on the same comfort-friendly design as Colemak. I was a fast Querty typist, switched to Dvorak (over 30 years ago), improved speed and comfort, and never looked back.

I did this too. Was on Colemak from about 2012 to 2018 or so. Was surprisingly easy to switch back to QWERTY. Did it in about two weeks. All that muscle memory was just sitting there waiting for six years.

Any eMacs/Dvorak/Colemak users? How was your experience with it?

Also if I were to attempt this should I use Dvorak or Colemak?

nothing too tragic in adapting to colemak vim bindings - hjkl is at best useless, and the rest is perfectly usable after couple hours. also you could check out colemak remapping mods to retain neio as hjkl

but i agree using others computers is literally soul crushing, that's the price for being too smart i guess

I switched to Colemak and couldn't be any happier now. Faster and more comfortable than ever

> Colemak is pretty awesome if your goal isn’t to be the fastest typer. I really think it should be the default keyboard layout taught.

People don't get enough exercise as is.

I switched to Colemak for 6 years and then back quite some time ago (something like 2009-2015). Colemak was certainly more comfortable as the author noted but I found enough friction that I switched back:

* Shared machines are hard to avoid when working on hardware like I was.

* There’s a lot of lost value in not being able to just sit down at someone else’s machine and navigate/code/etc. The reverse is also true of not easily having other people use your machine.

* If you game, this can be really hard. Some games attempt to do the right thing (e.g. WASD => WARS) but auxiliary things like “I” for inventory are less clear. Do you keep I to have the mnemonic or keep the physical spot? Caps lock to backspace can also mess with games that have chosen, for god knows what reason, to make caps lock a hot key. I spent a ton of time editing undocumented keymap files, and that’s not how I want to spend my leisure time.

* Not having caps lock means that if you somehow get caps lock turned on, it’s a pain to get it turned back off. This did happen to me multiple times - I used AHK for the remap and it’ll occasionally fail, usually due to external factors like an aborted system shutdown.

* You have to touch type. Getting physical Colemak keyboard for all cases (especially laptops) just isn’t feasible. This meant no more one handed typing or searching for hot keys when gaming (because I’m off the home row and I couldn’t build one handed muscle memory without a physical colemak keyboard).

* Lots of custom shortcuts are needed. It’s great that core copy/cut/paste/undo are kept in the same spots, but if you become power user of something like photoshop, you have to either remap all the shortcuts (again losing many mnemonics) or lose ergonomics as related keys spread out to odd spots when they should be clustered.

* You never really get rid of QWERTY muscle memory (at least 6 years on it with lots of focused practice, I didn’t). My overall amount of typos went way up compared to QWERTY. Also, and this is what finally made me switch back, the passwords I knew by muscle memory turned out to be different than what I thought I was typing. I had a password I could type, but didn’t know it (I swapped a fewer characters without realizing it). When I had to input this on a phone, I realized I couldn’t do that without first typing it on a physical keyboard.

* Virtual keyboards, such as on game consoles, are usually QWERTY (or alphabetical, yuck) and being able to touch type QWERTY does speed up their use.

In the end I accepted that we live in a QWERTY world and we’re too far down the rabbit hole to change. I find giving up some efficiency a worthwhile tradeoff for a drastic reduction in edge cases and overall fiddliness.

If it was an obviously better layout across various metrics, the world would have switched by now.

I don't believe this "worse is better" non-sense. Quality does break through eventually.