What's The BEST Keyboard Layout? 8 Alternatives To QWERTY

In this video, we'll be go through the most popular keyboard layouts and analyzing their heatmaps to determine which layout may be the right one for you!

Keyboard layouts mentioned -
Dvorak
Colemak
Colemak Mod DH
Halmak
Norman
Engram
Workman
Carpalx

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00:00 Intro
00:52 History of layouts
02:58 Qwerty
03:39 Dvorak
04:42 Colemak
05:22 Colemak DH
06:03 Workman
06:17 Norman
06:47 Engram
07:13 Carpalx
08:02 Halmak
08:25 Should we kill Qwerty?

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▶️ NEW columnar wireless split keyboard - The Dygma Defy
▶️ How to use an ergonomic keyboard in 5 easy steps
▶️ Is tenting your keyboard really THAT important?
▶️ What makes the Dygma Raise different (and better)!
▶️ Are ergonomic keyboards good for gaming?
▶️ From Laptop Keyboard To Ergonomic Split Mechanical Keyboard
▶️ Improving Productivity with the Dygma Raise

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[loicjeannin]

20 years Dvorak user here. Try any alternative layout, it's really worth it.

[mistlarousse]

I switched to Colemak a couple of years ago after a nasty finger injury and have never looked back :D I can still type in QWERTY if I'm using someone else’s keyboard but it's so nice to type in Colemak I really feel the difference with much less pain and strain!

[adamrennie]

Kudos to the producers and editors of the Dygma channel. I loved this one in particular.

Thanks for the amazing resource also.

I can’t wait to receive my Defy!!!

[mikeat]

I started my custom keyboard journey with a custom made layout based on how often a letter appears in our code base. I quickly realized that this approach was naive and switched to BEAKL. Not totally happy with it I switched to Colemak DH and am very happy now. Considering it took me months to get a decent speed after the switches I guess I will keep Colemak DH even though there are a lot of other interesting options. Thanks for the informative video!

[janmagtoast]

Advice for anybody that wants to pick a new layout:
READ THE DESIGN PHILOSOPHIES, don't pick them because some statistics they created outperform another layout.

[tokimaheryramarozaka]

Nice ! I tried Colemak, Dvorak, Bépo (for french), Soul, Engram, and Canary. But my main ended up being MTGAP by Michael Dickens in 2011. As it is very comfortable for english, but surprisingly for French and my native language as well.

While other layouts was a tid bit more comfortable than MTGAP, none of them were comfortable enough when it came to another language. I still would recommend alternative layouts though, especially for people who get RSI.

[LizardTheWizard]

I love Engram, it's so far the only layout I've been truly satisfied with (though I did customize it a bit). Perfect for my typing style. (Plus it says BYOU, which is kinda cute 😜)

[corentin]

"NEW PRODUCT!!!!

The new mystery device is aniese"

Not sure about the message. Great video by the way!

[dayannahkali]

I am into the bépo layout for around 6 years. For typing french, it is really a game changer. We have a lot of accents that are on the number line on our traditional AZERTY boards. I can type now comfortably resting my wrists on the pad and I love it.

[ravenroth]

For a future video, can we get a typing test / sound test demonstration? It would be nice to see someone using the Dygma Defy, and it would be nice to hear how it sounds at various tenting angles, with a few different switch types, and maybe the difference between typing on a bare desk vs a desk with a desk mat.

Thanks for all your hard work!

[KeyboardDweebs-zrjw]

I switched to Colemak back in october of 2023. It was a challenge, and to be honest I am not sure if it was worth the switch. Now that I have moved down to a 30% hummingbird layout, I have this weird amalgamation of colemak-dh where I only did the DH mod on the left hand, I have moved X where Q used to be, K where J used to be and V where X used to be. Q, J, Z, and / are on combos. Mostly on the left hand. At the moment this layout is very comfortable for me. I really enjoy it. It works for me as I am left handed. If you find something about a layout uncomfortable. Change it. Play around with it. It took me about a month after switching to hummingbird to find something that felt right for me. With QMK anything is possible. So do what works for you.

[bobeid]

After spending quite a long period experimenting with layouts I can say, only from my own experience the following:
1. Compatibility-wise, the absolute king is qwerty.
2. The most important improvements that could be done to qwerty are: replacing caps lock with backspace and P and: switched.
These two things will improve finger and wrist movement with significant benefits.
3. Any other layout works only if people can retain compatibility with qwerty, OR some device with a competing enough demand would flood the market to influence the behavior to move in other layout direction. VR devices could help in that direction.

[FryKFlibble]

I use a custom mix of Colemak and ColemakDH with modifications to adjust it to the german language (on a Lily58 split-kb). All but the standard layer are completely self developed. I'm pretty happy how it turned out.

[jlr]

Another long time Colemak user here. I'm retired now and don't spend nearly as much time at the keyboard as I used to. However, when I was working and typing pretty much all day, I developed pretty severe wrist pain. I purchased a split keyboard (Ergodox) and switched to Colemak and all my pain went away. Still using the layout today and I'm on my second Ergodox (Moonlander) since I totally wore the first one out. To me the key isn't speed, it is comfort.

[Autoskip]

User of a split 6 by 5 (by two) programmable ortholinear Dvorak keyboard here, and there's another thing those keyboards don't tend to consider - I've found myself using the bottom outside corner keys by resting the side of my hand on them - I hadn't really given that too much thought, but you've inspired me to switch things up a bit and put my shift key on one of them - I suspect it'll get a bit more use than the control keys that I put there because "that's the way it's done" (ironically, I've already been bucking some of that by putting 'ESC' to the left of 'A' so I can fit '~' in the normal spot, and yet I never questioned having two control keys taking up prime real-estate).

[awesomedavid]

Been using Engram for 5 months now and I enjoy it a lot. I'm up to 100WPM but the key thing is feel. It's just so comfortable and there are so many bigrams and trigrams

[probE]

switched to colemak late last year and it truly has been a good decision. it feels much more comfortable to type for long sessions.

[NeilHaskins]

I'm interested in trying a 34-key layout with a spilt ergonomic keyboard. It seems a lot of people are using Colemak based layouts, so that's probably what I'll go with. I think having Colemak for a split ergo and sticking with qwerty for standard keyboards may help to eliminate confusion when I'm using other people's computers.

I think it's interesting you mentioned alternate layouts are generally designed for typing English, not programming, as I suspect a fairly large majority of those using alternate layouts are programmers.

[SoNonWoo]

My kids are just now coming to the age of having to use keyboards for school. I figure that this is a great opportunity to explore alternative layouts. Also, I figure custom keebs is a good entry-level exercize prior to Raspberry Pis.

[ExtremeSquared]

I'm one of the few people who has been using Carpalx QGMLWY for a few years. The optimization theory is sound, but most non-qwerty are. I don't believe there is much optimization difference between Workman/Colemak/Carpalx. Whatever your OS supports better probably makes sense. My OS supports Carpalx natively, but the obvious winner on this is Colemak.
The biggest difference for me was ortholinear. You will immediately start to hate mechanical typewriter bar offsets once you get used to ortho.
And I wouldn't have done any of this if I spent any time at all on shared keyboards.