Context here matters. Why are you trying to increase your typing speed?

Do you hunt and peck, and you want to type faster? Do you feel you "don't type very fast," compared to some kind of standard? Are you competing in typing competitions?

If you hunt and peck, your best course of action is to break your habit and learn to type on homerow keys.

If you feel you don't type fast enough using homerow keys, your best bet is just to type more. Perhaps think out a sentence, then test yourself for how fast you can type it versus just typing things off the cuff. I find that when I know what I want to type (e.g. I know a sentence I want to say), I can type blazingly fast, versus typing words as they come out of my brain, which is much slower.

I used Typing club's Typing Jungle[1] for several months every morning for 15-30 minutes to go from slow hunt and peck to touch-typing at 60-70 WPM. They have almost 700 lessons of increasing difficulty.

Keep in mind that those lessons are for typing normal texts, not code (not enough lessons incorporating special symbols). It worked well for me since I don't care about speed that much when typing code. Being able to type prose much faster is more important to me.

I have typing.io[2] bookmarked for practicing typing code. I never really got into it since I feel like I get enough practice when writing my own code.

[1] https://www.typingclub.com

[2] https://typing.io

I can only tell how we were taught 10 finger typing, some 30 years ago:

Don't aim for speed! Aim for typing without errors and - more importantly - a constant rhythm. Music helps. Start extremely slow and spell out each word letter by letter in your mind.

You should find many exercises out there for how to get started with all fingers. But the key is really to slow things down. It's very much like learning an instrument.

If you keep practicing this say 10-20 minutes per day you'll soon see progress. Speed then comes very naturally and without much effort.

I got a lot better and faster at typing when I switched to a das keyboard without key labels. It forced me to learn and not rely on looking down at the keys.

10/10 would recommend.. also it stops noobs from using your box.

I learned basic touch typing from Mavis beacon. It would show you how to place your hands on the keyboard as you type which the bare minimum feature I consider when searching for typing software to recommend. Right now, It doesn't work properly on windows 10 because it is too old.

There is also https://www.typingclub.com/ which is also a good site but it is riddled by ads (removable by paying of course) and requires you to create an account.

I wish if there was an open-source alternative which is either a terminal or web-based version that also shows how to place hands on the keyboard.

As usual, that will depend a lot on your current typing technique and speed.

I learned touch typing on an electric typewriter at school decades ago so I don't really remember how it is to not know how to do it.

This is what I did to learn typing Dvorak well AFTER I left school:

- I used laminated piece of paper with the layout of the keyboard wedged between monitor and desk. This allowed me to see the keyboard layout without looking at the keyboard.

- I used programs to learn Dvorak

- I used metronome to learn to type constant stream of characters. Pressing shift registers as a single beat. This is not strictly necessary for typing speed but I really like the feel of producing characters this way. My colleagues say the sound is fantastic as if a machine was typing.

- I use only high quality mechanical keyboards with US international layout. I don't waste time on keyboards that have uneven action and don't register presses same way every time.

First, you need good mechanical keyboard. Some people will advocate for specific models or switches, but you need to choose one by yourself by typing on it.

Second, you need to learn touch typing. There are some tips:

a) buy keyboard with blank keycaps;

b) if you can't buy such keyboard (you really should), try to pull out keycaps and randomly change their order;

c) put blanked or some non-transparent sheet over your hands.

Third, change keypress repeat interval rate and delay in your system. It will force you to hit keys quicker. If you're using linux, good starter is to run 'xset r rate 200 60'. It means 'start repeating key if it's pressed for more that 200ms and repeat it 60 times per second'. Then gradually decrease first number and increase second.

Some people will tell, that typing speed doesn't matter much, but that's not true. When you get into the flow, you're stopping thinking verbally and starting to think in entire code blocks. It's crucial to not be hindered by keyboard in that case.

And remember, it should be uncomfortable at first. Otherwise, there will be no progress.

For me this really helped my typing speed. Like more then doubled. https://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/

It's a cli but once you get into it it's really a great experience. It will take you all the way from where to put your fingers onto typing so fast your like someone out of Hackers

For the record I regularly hit speeds of >140wpm on 10fastfingers https://10fastfingers.com/user/1725123/ and typeracer https://data.typeracer.com/pit/profile?user=richivinsky

I switched to Dvorak about 15 years ago, and while I’m not going to advocate switching, I would like to provide one point of view.

I switched in high school for all the reasons people switch the Dvorak. Before switching, my QWERTY avg was around 60. Switching allowed me to relearn touch typing with a clean slate.

Now, 15 years later, I still regularly use QWERTY and Dvorak. But the contexts are different. I use QWERTY on my phone when typing with my thumbs, and Dvorak on my keyboard.

Recently I did an experiment with myself where I replaced all the keys on my keyboard with blank keycaps. Then I tried playing typeracer with a QWERTY layout. As expected, I consistently scored around ~40wpm.

However, if I allowed myself to look at the BLANK keycaps, it’s like a switch triggered in my brain and I was able to consistently type around ~60wpm. It’s like the visual input unlocked something in my brain.

When I type Dvorak, I use proper form, and don’t rely on the visual signals. I believe that because of this, my fingers have had to learn more deeply the shapes of the words as I type them.

One thing which I do is to type words up to about 7 characters as a single fluid motion. For longer words, I subconsciously chunk them into smaller parts, and type each of those parts in a single motion.

So my suggestions is to block all visual signals in whatever layout you use, and allow your fingers to develop a deep intuition about the shapes of words. Typing with proper form will definitely help, but the fastest typists in the world typically don’t use proper form. They just have really good accuracy.

Finally, I don’t think the physical keyboard matters that much. I would not recommend dropping >$150 on a fancy keyboard in order to practice typing faster. I use a fancy keyboard because I like fancy keyboards and how they feel, but that has very little impact on my typing speeds. I can be equally competitive with most off the shelf membrane and scissor switch keyboards.

The best thing I did was go from decent typing by knowing learned patterns (but having to look at the keyboard most of the time), to learning home key typing.

I did this in year 9 at school and my typing speed went down for about a month whilst re-learning.

The idea is you rest your fingers on asdf jkl; and to type a letter, raise the appropriate finger up or down.

Typing programs will teach you quickly by practicing the home keys then adding letters one by one like ‘e’ and ‘i’.

The biggest improvement comes because you don’t need to look at the keyboard. Your efficiency in overall computing tasks increases, then your typing speed rapidly overtakes your old style.

After a while you learn patterns of words so you aren’t always moving a finger off the home key and back like a robot. This is when you get really fast.

Always return to the home keys by feeling for the little bumps on the ‘f’ and ‘j’ keys.

I used to lay in bed at night practicing typing simple words with my brain. I’m sure this helped considerably.

It’s the best thing I ever self learned. Well worth the month of slower typing as my entire adult life typing has been a breeze.

It depends how fast you want to get. You need both skills and good keyboard. You can't type FAST with an average keyboard that doesn't register keys as fast as you can type.

With standard Qwerty touch-typing fingers position, you can build up to 85-95wpm easily. You need a lot of practice to build the muscle memory. You can learn basics in Typingclub.com and then you need a lot more practice in communities like typeracer.com.

If you want to get faster than that, you have to use advanced methods that competitive typist use which is fundamentally very similar to standard touch typing positions but slight difference to make it more efficient.

Different keyboard layouts have the same story. But you could also switch to Dvorak. It does theoretically give you speed boost while it puts less stress on your fingers.

If you don't want to become a competitive typist, better to not go above ~65wpm. You can really hurt your fingers without having proper exercises. You probably don't need more than that in regular jobs either.

Switch to an ortholinear keyboard like [the Preonic from OLKB][1]

These designs reduce motion (speed) and are uniformly laid out (accuracy) which is crucial because typing faster alone is not enough

[1]: https://drop.com/buy/preonic-mechanical-keyboard

Between my old made-up typing style (left hand hit over half the board, hit x with thumb, few other weird bits), learning homerow, learning to type on ortholinear keyboards, and learning dvorak, I've found it works well to use one of those sites that has you type various letters to get used to them, then once you're comfortable, move to something like 10fastfingers to grind speed. Practice daily. It's pretty fun for me, which makes it easier. I hit 160wpm (peak not average, pulled it off only twice) at my best before learning homerow. Never quite made it back. I'm also a bit slower with dvorak now, but maybe I can get up again someday. I'm around 115-120wpm these days which is pretty passable, but I do miss the absolute joy of typing as fast as I could and really pushing my limits.

Practice practice practice.

More obviously, you can't type faster than you can think. Take the effort to prepare your thoughts. Develop a flow for your stream of consciousness. Typing on the fly requires a kind of cadence and rhythm that only comes with developing a proper form.

Honestly best advice is just get a keyboard you're comfortable with. I'm quite fond of my WASD keyboard. The sticky keys on my MacBook Pro just don't cut it.

I learned through doing runs of Mario Teaches Typing so fast that the computer struggled to render frames.

My typing speed's gone down, substantially over the years. I think that's a good thing. I think slower. I pause before I speak. I try to say more with less words. I've also picked up a weird habit of using only my index finger for my right hand but my WPM is still around 100.

Bear in mind if you're a programmer that touted learning resources that don't include symbol keys are of limited use. There are many speedy human-language typists who have to peer at the keyboard every time they encounter a tilde or Fn key.

I'd also add: only make this a priority if you don't already touch type. If you do, your speed will be adequate, and you'll gain more by adding higher-level tools to your arsenal (refactoring, structural editing, etc). It's sad that in 2020 we're still largely 'editing text' when programming, but careful use of IntelliJ or emacs (amongst others) can often lift the mechanics up a conceptual notch or three.

Proper touch typing technique. Go slow at first and just practice and practice to build up speed. Like practicing the guitar, slow focused practice will pay dividends later. Good web site for touch typing is typingclub.com.

One of the things that helped me the most was moving to the Dvorak keyboard. Dvorak lets me type at a higher speed, with less mistakes, and most important of all: with no hand cramping.

As for public/other computers that I don't get to configure: I found that I never really lost any speed on Qwerty. Whether that's the norm or I got lucky, I am not sure. Also, I find Dvorak to be available on most systems where the user can configure their input settings. Windows, Mac, and most Linux has Dvorak support built-in that are as easy to add as if you were adding another locale's keyboard layout.

Play a game where typing is required to communicate. Never took any formal typing courses just started playing a lot of EverQuest back in the day. There wasn't voice chat at the time and the gameplay requires a lot of quick communication with your team. Can easily touch type 100+ wpm (according to typeracer.com) now. It's very motivating to be able to type well when you must to communicate and you have something you really really want to communicate via typing (such as communicating with your team via typing in a fast pace game)

The biggest gain for me came from using a split keyboard. I had some bad habits where my dominant hand was crossing the keyboard to hit keys that my non-dominant one should have been hitting, and this was impacting my speed. By using a split keyboard, it forced my hands in to the correct posture and didn't allow one hand to dominate because the other side of the keyboard was too far away.

I was tracking my progress on typera.net, which is quite dated, but seems to have a nice balance of challenging words and phrases.

Concerted practice. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you practice purposefully consistently.

As mentioned typeracer.com is great, there's also 10fastfingers.com as well.

Are you a touch typist?

Learn to touch type. Don't look at the keyboard, just read what you are typing. Some touch typing tutors are good for the exercises. Just like learning the scales on a piano.

I do a lot of sysadmin work so I stick with QWERTY layout because it is everywhere. I did try Dvorak and split keyboards, didn't find any speed gain. Probably due to the fact that I learnt to touch type QWERTY on typewriters without white-out.

A lot of high effort responses here (practice, training, new keyboards, etc).

Everyone I know learned to type very fast by pc gaming MMOs. WoW or other games force you to ‘practice’ a few hours a day, get extremely in tune with your keyboard, type the same few sentences thousands of times, and type short sentences extremely quickly. Short term a wow addiction is bad for your life, but you do gain exceptional keyboard skills.

Are there any competitive typers here? I touch type around 105 WPM, peaking sometimes at 140. I'd like to get faster into the range of 200-300 as I see other people typing at on leaderboards, but I don't know what I should do. Should I switch away from QWERTY? Should I use a different type of keyboard? Should I be doing any mental tricks or is it just raw practice?

I played through Epistory (find it on Steam) a couple of times and my typing speed improved. I didn't really have to try that hard and playing the game is pretty enjoyable. The same studio has another one that's a similar style (Nanotale). I haven't played it, but if it's anywhere near the quality of Epistory, it will have been money well spent.

In what way(s) do they deviate from proper form?