Mastering My Moonlander Keyboard: 1 Year Later

MOONLANDER PART 2 👇

PATREON

SECOND BRAIN ACCESS
(Get access to my Second Brain Notes Repository on Notion by signing up for my Substack weekly video email)

KEYBOARD SWITCH TESTER AFFILIATE LINKS

MY CONFIG

0:00 - Intro
1:15 - Overview
2:01 - Model I Bought
3:23 - LED Colors
4:11 - My Layout
5:10 - Other Layouts
5:51 - Challenges
8:10 - Benefits
9:10 - Zen Thoughts
9:53 - Outro

[filip]

Thanks for the tips, I'll surely check your layout video, when mine arrives. I am actually blown out with the production quality of this video even though you only have 500 subs. Keep up the good work man!

[franksenkel]

"we do these things, not because they are easy; but because we thought they'd be easy"

[monksuu]

I bought my Moonlander in May 22 and I switched to a variant of dvorak, svorak, that includes Scandinavian letters. I also switched some dvorak keys for the vowel (left) hand. I have my mouse in the center because I didn't feel like to open my right shoulder outside the right pad. Thanks for sharing your experience!

[EmileNani]

Going to watch this again when my Moonlander arrives

Thanks!

[Just_Add_Coffee]

Love my Moonlander, but I had a lot of trouble going from the Ergodox thumb cluster to the Moonlander's. For some reason, that was harder for me than the transition from traditional staggered columns to columnar. And getting the ZSA "Platform" has made it more of a joy to type on. I'm working up the courage to make the jump to NeoVIM, but using the Moonlander with an OS like Pop OS that uses some of the movements to switch active windows has been helpful! Thanks for this video, Zazen!

[mthalter]

My one regret was not ordering the Moonlander with the blank, sculpted keycaps, since I quickly went ham with customizing my keyboard layout. The lettered keycaps were all the same sculpt, which meant I was able to rearrange them in any configuration. An exception was J and F, which had the small bump to indicate homerow. Being able to look at my keyboard and know which key was which with the new layout definitely helped me a lot at first, but now that I'm touch typing, sometimes I wonder if I should've went with the blank keycaps instead. Unluckily for me, my country had been blocked from their delivery locations, so I had to go through a third party to deliver it from the USA to here, not to mention I lost $10 in currency conversion fees (doubled since I got refunded the first time... the fees were not refunded), so it's kind of hard for me to order more stuff from them.

[EdvardssonTech]

Got mine a few weeks ago, love it! Takes some time getting used to as I'm switching to colemak! Gonna have a look at your config for some inspiration! Would you mind sharing a link to your config?

[李景天]

Wow, you have the same keyboard and plant that I have on my desk

[ThomasBudde]

So happy that I am not the only one petting their dog with the feet when they lie under the desk xD

[joshuaberrios]

Glad I found this video and that it is most recent. My wife asked me about the keyboard I wanted for my 30th birthday and I told her this one since I am working towards being healthier and maintaining my fight strong against nerve damage and arthritis when working. I plan on keeping my Logitech MX Keys around as a backup until I’m fully transitioned to this keyboard’s mechanics and ergonomics.

[mateuszormianek]

Hey, I'm considering purchasing a Moonlander keyboard to alleviate wrist pain from programming. Observing your keyboard use, I noticed another potential issue: I'm unsure if it's because your hands are small or if the Moonlander is particularly large. Do you find its size to be a problem? Additionally, I'm curious about the necessity to move your hands more, especially for thumb usage. How comfortable is that? And do your wrists consistently rest on the wrist rest?

[b]

Don't you miss dedicated f keys for debugging?

[omni_]

I bought this and switched to Dvorak at the same time. I really love it.

[riffsontwowheels]

If we switch to other layouts on the ZSA website how do we know where the layer key is does it stay the same?

[jjuel]

The best thing I did with my split is start using my mouse in the middle. Give it a try if you haven't. That way you are closer to your mouse and don't have to reach as far.

[delasantos]

Great video! Cam ups recommend black or white?

[christinesu]

You inspired me to dust off my moonlander!

[CrispyCircuits]

I'm waiting for mine to arrive. I ordered black, mostly because my desk is white.
I got the generic keycaps because I am a heavy vim user, I use browser addons (Vimium C) to mimic vim keys and I also use tmux with vim. I also use both vi and emacs editing in the shell (ksh).
The other reason is that I will be typing in English, Spanish, Classical Latin with macrons and Russian. So just English letters will be just in the way.
I'm looking forward to it. I am getting by right now by having two keyboards side by side to spread my arms apart. Clunky but it helps.

[vexnetsec]

just placed an order after watching this video

[CaffeineForCode]

i found it helpful to use the zip kit to “cap off” a dozen or so keys, especially the hard to reach ones. Great video!