Current Layout
Layout to Try Out
Layout to Try Out
Words to Convert
Converted Words to Type
Alternative keyboard layouts are generally better than qwerty, but there are a lot of them out there and it can be hard to know which one to learn. You may not even know yet what features of a layout matter most to you. (Would you like one with high rolls? Or more alternation? How do you feel about redirects, scissors, SFBs, SFSs, LSBs, or the distribution of work across different fingers and hands? Etc.) And once you have a layout in mind how do you gain confidence that you will like it? That it will be worth the effort to learn it?
This tool lets you get a feel for a new keyboard layout without having to retrain your brain or muscle memory. It converts a set of words so that typing the converted words with your current keyboard layout feels just like typing the original (unconverted) words on the new layout. Your fingers will be making the same movements as if they were typing the original words on the new layout. This gives you a sense of what typing on the new layout feels like before doing the work of actually learning to type with it. Try more than one new layout to see if you like one better than the other. Once you have decided on a layout this tool can even help you get started with learning it.
The simplest way to use this tool is with a single layout to try out, which gives you a sense of what it's like to type with that layout. Another way is to add two or more layouts to try out, which lets you type each word as it is typed in each layout, giving you a word-by-word, back-to-back comparison. (The first time you type a word is how it is typed in the first layout to try out, the second time is how it is typed in the second layout, etc.) To do this kind of word-by-word comparison between your current layout and one or more other layouts, simply add your current layout as one of the layouts to try out. Similarly if you would like to type each word more than once in a given layout, you can add that layout more than once as a layout to try out.
Thanks to Keyboard Layout Battles for being the primary inspiration for this tool and for (almost all of) the layout data. Thanks to monkeytype for the word lists (the top 200, 1,000, 5,000, and 10,000 word lists).