Is touch typing worth learning?

Yes, for people who type for hours each day, and less clearly for people who type briefly or mostly on a phone. The strongest case is not speed. Typists who had not learned touch typing spent about twice as much of their typing time looking at the keyboard as touch typists did ¹. Touch typing lets you keep your eyes on the text, and that matters most when you write for long periods. The guide to touch typing sets out what the method involves and what the studies found.

Touch typing pays off most when you type for hours a day

The cost is months of practice. Deliberate training of hundreds of hours is what the authors of a 2016 study say it takes to reach the performance rates reported in the research literature ². A typist who writes for an hour a day gets the attention benefit over many weeks. A typist who writes for a few minutes a day is unlikely to recover the time spent learning.

The benefit grows with use. If you write, code or transcribe for most of your working day, the short glances at the keys add up across every session. Those glances are what touch typing removes, so the case is strongest for the people who type the most. Our question on how long touch typing takes sets out the timeline in more detail.

The speed gain in the studies is real but small

The lab studies do not show a large speed gain. In one 2016 study, touch typists and typists without training copied text at nearly the same speed, and the authors found that self-taught typists reached speeds comparable with touch typists ³. A second 2016 study, the Vanderbilt study, found touch typists about 14 words per minute faster than nonstandard typists ⁴. That is a clearer gap, but still not a transformation. Our question on whether touch typing is faster than hunt and peck sets out both results.

So if your main goal is raw speed, expect a modest return for the time. The return is larger when you care about accuracy, comfort and not looking down.

Phones and dictation change the calculation

On a phone, the finger map does not apply in the usual way. In a 2019 study of 37,000 volunteers, people who had taken a touch typing course for desktop keyboards averaged 35.7 words per minute on phones, slightly slower than the 36.4 of those who had not ⁵. A desktop course did not make phone typing faster in that study.

Dictation is a different option for drafting. In a controlled study on an iPhone, English speech reached 153 words per minute ⁶, against 52 on the built-in keyboard in the same study. Speech suits first drafts and messages, and touch typing still suits precise edits, symbols and code. That split is our judgment, not a finding of the studies. The comparison of dictation and typing covers when each wins.

Accessibility can make a keyboard the wrong tool

Touch typing assumes you can use a keyboard well with both hands. The Job Accommodation Network says people with physical, sensory or developmental limitations may not be able to use a standard keyboard and mouse effectively, and that speech recognition software is made for people with a range of limitations, including people with no hand or finger movement, and may help ⁷. If a keyboard is hard to use, the value of touch typing is smaller, and voice input may fit better. That is a decision to make with your own needs and, where relevant, an occupational therapist or accessibility adviser.

It depends: your hours, your goal and whether you keep practicing

• Hours of typing. The more you type, the more the attention gain adds up. Light typists gain little from months of practice.
• Your goal. If you want comfort, accuracy and less looking down, the case is strong. If you only want a few more words per minute, the studies suggest a smaller return.
• Whether you keep using it. A 2003 paper notes that success in touch-typing training does not guarantee people keep touch typing in everyday use ⁸. A skill you stop practicing is not much of a benefit.

For programmers, the evidence is thin

Programmers often ask whether touch typing matters for coding. The sources we found are mostly opinion and anecdote. We did not find a controlled study that measures whether touch typing, or typing speed, changes what a programmer produces. The studies above measure typing a given text, and coding involves more thinking and reading than copying. Our question on whether typing speed matters in coding covers that gap, and the question on whether touch typing helps with repetitive strain covers the ergonomic side.

If you code all day, the attention benefit applies to the parts of the day spent writing, and it is worth weighing that against the months of practice.

What to do: decide with a one-week test

1. Count your typing time. Estimate how many hours a day you spend typing, and how much of that is copying versus composing.
2. Check whether you look down. Watch your hands for one day. If you look at the keys often, the attention gain applies to you.
3. Try the home row for a week. Practice 10 to 15 minutes a day, the length Ratatype recommends ⁹, and note how it feels. Our question on the best free way to learn compares ways to practice.
4. Decide on the full method only if the practice helps. If the first week is too frustrating, the evidence suggests you can keep your current method and still get value from how to type faster.

Touch typing is a reasonable skill to learn for people who write for long hours. It is a weaker case for occasional typists, and it is not a substitute for dictation or other input methods when a keyboard is hard to use.