Split keyboard — experience after a year

Is there a way back?

One of the main questions that interests those who want to try a split keyboard: will I be able to use a regular one after that? The answer is yes. Without any inconvenience.

At some point, I got tired of carrying the keyboard home and to work every day and it became exclusively work-related. At home, I returned to the regular keyboard. I use both the split and the regular one natively. The typing speed is the same. I use all ten fingers on the split, about 4-5 on the regular one. Again, the typing speed on both is about the same.

Sometimes there is confusion: on the split, my control and shift are swapped. And also my “ё” is not on the top left, but on the top right. But this confusion is not critical, and rather, if it happens, it is one-time within the first few minutes, and then without typos.

By the way, this entire article was written on a regular keyboard.

Problems with the mouse

With a split keyboard, there is a desire to abandon the mouse. One of the reasons: when the right hand is busy with the mouse, only the left can press the keys. On a regular keyboard, this is not a problem - you need to press enter, move your hand and press, focusing on peripheral vision. The keys of the right hand in relation to the left are always in place. With the split, this does not work at all. The right side can lie anywhere. And even if you look at it and aim, I still can’t press the key I need, because I don’t know where it is. I know its location blindly with my right hand. But I don’t know where it is if I just look at the keyboard.

And there are also layers. Suppose if you hold the layer key with your right hand, arrows appear on your left hand. And if you have a mouse in your right hand, then there are no more arrows for you.

Of course, as a true split keyboard enthusiast, I tried to throw away the mouse and control the computer exclusively with the keyboard. The most difficult thing is the browser. For it, there is a wonderful Vimium plugin, which at first glance solves the mouse problem and does it very gracefully. But in practice, we live in a world of complex frontends, where instead of regular form elements, every frontender makes custom elements according to their abilities. Sometimes they work through Vimium, and sometimes they only work with a mouse. These are rare cases, occurring about once in 50 pages. For me, discarding 2% of the internet was unacceptable, and Vimium went to the trash, in place of the mouse.

As a result, I went another way. I came up with a new layout considering the needs of the left hand. Now I can activate 2 layers with my left hand, one with numbers, the other with arrows. Plus, the left hand now has access to exclusive right-hand keys, such as enter or delete. If you add to all this mod-tap keys (which have one value when pressed briefly, and another when held) and combo keys (when you press 2 buttons simultaneously, a third one is triggered), you can even argue that using the keyboard with one hand is quite convenient. In theory, you can probably even make a full layout for the left hand and leave only one half of the split on a permanent basis.

Where is the button?!

I also want to share one of the problems of early use. On different layers, I had almost all possible keys from a regular keyboard. I didn't really understand how to remember their location. Periodically, I came across the need to write some symbol, for example “{”, “+”, “*”, but I couldn't remember where it was. After a period of suffering, I reassigned frequent symbols to “obvious” places for myself. And it worked. It turned out that the symbols you don't use are not needed. They are somewhere there on the layers (or maybe they are no longer there), but I don't know where, and I don't feel deprived.

At first, I was very interested in looking at other people's layouts. It seemed that they were all experienced there, they had probably already come up with the perfect layout. Now I understand that this is nonsense. There is no universal perfect layout in the split. There is only a personal perfect layout at a certain point in time. You change, and your layout changes.

Gaming

A few more words about gaming with a split keyboard. I never tried to play with it, but I assume that it is not suitable for gaming. Game developers adjust the controls to the left hand, expecting that you have 5 rows there, there is ctrl, shift, tab. The right hand is initially designed for the mouse. I assume that in the split, the first couple of hours, instead of enjoying the game, you will be reconfiguring the control keys. I don't even want to try.

Main conclusion

So is it worth switching to a split keyboard? A year ago, I definitely answered - no. Getting used to it required a lot of effort, and as a result, there was not a single tangible advantage. Today, the split is as simple, transparent, and invisible to me as a regular keyboard. I look at the monitor. My hands press something there, and I see what I expect to see on the screen. Today my answer is not clear, and I would answer the question with a question:

• Is it worth switching to a split?

• Why not?

I don't know what else to add, but if you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them in the comments.