this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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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.

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Yeah, of course not all symbols will fit, but wouldn't it be better to minimize the context switching? Numbers for example are used very often, I really don't see why I have to go to a different page to be able to type them.

Corollary, is it possible to easily create a custom layout for personal use? Or do you have to check out the code and build yourself etc?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really frustrating when you want to type some alphanumeric characters and having to switch to the number page each time.

As much as I like Thumb-Key, I think a QWERTY keyboard with "number rows" will beat it pants down in terms of speed when it comes to typing of repetitive alphanumeric characters.

I really hope the dev could finda way to embed numbers along with the letters on the 3x3 grid. A good idea is to make use of long-pressing of the BIG/MAIN letters on the thumbKey to produce a corressponding number.

@dessalines. Worth a try?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

MessEase had a long-press to get to the number layer. The time interval was adjustable. I hope to see something like that.