Is Colemak worth learning?

Colemak is worth learning if you care about comfort and want to keep many of your QWERTY shortcuts. It is not worth learning because it is proven to make you faster. We found no controlled study that compares Colemak typing speed with QWERTY, and the studies of alternative layouts that we found test Dvorak, not Colemak. Expect to type more slowly for a while, and decide whether the comfort case is strong enough for you to accept that cost.

Colemak puts more of your typing on the home row

Colemak's main design idea is to place the most common English letters on the home row, where the fingers rest, so the fingers move less. The figures below come from the layouts' own design comparison, not from timed typing tests.

Colemak changes fewer keys, so the switch costs less

Colemak moves 17 keys from their QWERTY positions. It keeps the QWERTY positions of most non-letter characters and many popular keyboard shortcuts ³. For a typist who uses copy, paste and undo every day, check those shortcuts first, since the layout keeps many popular shortcuts in place, but not all. The designers claim that this makes Colemak easier to learn than Dvorak for people who already type on QWERTY, without losing efficiency ⁴. That is a claim, and we did not find a study that measures learning time for Colemak.

The finger-travel numbers come from the layout's advocates

The Colemak project says that QWERTY needs 102 percent more finger movement than Colemak, and that Dvorak needs about 10 percent more than Colemak ⁵. Those are design estimates made by the people who promote the layout, and they do not publish a method you can repeat. Treat them as a reason to test the layout, not as proof.

We found no controlled speed study for Colemak

The honest answer to the speed question is that the evidence is thin. The government test of an alternative layout that we found, from the mid-1950s, studied Dvorak. It found that retrained typists matched their old speed but did not surpass it ⁶, and that the retraining took 100 hours ⁷. Colemak has not, as far as we found, been tested in a comparable independent study. The economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis concluded that rigorous studies are inconclusive as to whether alternative keyboard layouts offer any real benefits ⁸. Informal reports of speed gains are not controlled, so we do not use them here.

If you want more background on what the sources do and do not show, the question on whether Dvorak is faster than QWERTY covers the same evidence in more detail.

It depends on how you type and what hurts

Colemak is more likely to be worth the effort in these cases:

• You type for hours each day and your hands feel strained on QWERTY. Keep in mind that the evidence on keyboards and wrist pain is limited. Research has not proved that typing, mouse use or other repeated movements cause carpal tunnel syndrome ⁹.
• You can keep a QWERTY keyboard for work that cannot slow down, and you do not share computers often.
• You enjoy learning a new skill and can tolerate weeks of worse output.

It is less likely to be worth it if you type on other people's computers most days, if you have deadlines that cannot wait, or if you are hoping for a speed gain. For pain or numbness in the hands, see a clinician rather than changing layouts.

How to try Colemak without losing your speed

1. Record your current speed and accuracy on one fixed test, using the method in how typing speed is measured.
2. Write down the shortcuts you use most, and check whether they stay in place on Colemak.
3. Practice every day at a fixed time, and keep QWERTY for work with deadlines.
4. Test again after several weeks. If you are not more comfortable, or your speed has not recovered, return to QWERTY. Practice the habits in touch typing on whichever layout you use, since those habits matter for any layout.

For the other alternative and the QWERTY history, see why keyboards use QWERTY and the guide to keyboard layouts compared. The overview of how to type faster covers the training methods that work on any keyboard.