Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#41

Post by bravesoul2 » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:42 PM UTC

faizshah wrote: post #23

lburton wrote: post #6

This will depend a bit on the person but for me when I injured my right arm I found that my touch typing muscle memory worked surprisingly well with a toggle key to flip the left side of my keyboard to become a mirrored version of the right side. Each finger was still hitting the same key like it would if I was using my right hand to hit the key but on my left hand. This was fairly easy to accomplish on a QMK firmwar…

I had the same experience, my typing speed with two hands is 90-120 but with one hand i can still get 50-70. The hard part is punctuation but with AI these days you could try just prompting and let the AI deal with syntax for you.

That's a fast speed. I practice to get to 60 then said well, that's good enough!

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#42

Post by justinc8687 » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:42 PM UTC

Once their finger movement has been restored, I'd look into various large-split keyboards. The Kinesis Freestyle2 USB version has a large split (20") option that could help. They have screw hole mounts on the bottom which you could likely jerry-rig with a sling to put the keyboard in the proper position. I used it with a custom 3d-printed mount so that I could attach it to the arms of my chair.

The wireless version has less of a gap, but you could always just get two of them and use the left half of one and the right half of another.

Feel free to reach out to me at justin (at) justin-c (dot) com, if you want to talk. I spent about 5 years working on custom mounting options for keyboards after getting a severe RSI, ultimately proven to be partially caused by a rheumatic condition.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#43

Post by jfengel » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

lburton wrote: post #6

This will depend a bit on the person but for me when I injured my right arm I found that my touch typing muscle memory worked surprisingly well with a toggle key to flip the left side of my keyboard to become a mirrored version of the right side. Each finger was still hitting the same key like it would if I was using my right hand to hit the key but on my left hand. This was fairly easy to accomplish on a QMK firmwar…

Yes, I was just going to make this suggestion. If it's a temporary problem, you probably don't want a solution that requires extensive retraining to use. A mirrored keyboard takes advantage of existing brain wiring. autohotkey layout: https://github.com/hanmindev/mirrorboard xkb layout: https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...

In a quick experiment, I found that utterly baffling. On zero practice, it was much faster for me to type with just my left hand. (Though it requires me to keep looking at the keyboard, because I'm leaving the home position.)

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#44

Post by anamexis » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

justinc8687 wrote: post #42

Once their finger movement has been restored, I'd look into various large-split keyboards. The Kinesis Freestyle2 USB version has a large split (20") option that could help. They have screw hole mounts on the bottom which you could likely jerry-rig with a sling to put the keyboard in the proper position. I used it with a custom 3d-printed mount so that I could attach it to the arms of my chair. The wireless version h…

I will also plug the Keyboard.io Model 100 here. It has a ton of mounting options including tripod screws for custom solutions. The halves are connected with a standard ethernet cable so you can have them any distance apart.

https://shop.keyboard.io/products/model-100

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#45

Post by rockemsockem » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

I was in a full arm cast (including fingers) for 9 months in college while taking many CS classes and I just used my one hand to type on the full qwerty keyboard. It definitely slowed me down, but I got up to ~60 wpm with the one hand. I think it's easier to just stick with the layout you know vs trying to learn to type with one hand in a new layout.

The nice part is that I can still type pretty quickly one-handed (maybe 50 wpm? Haven't measured in a while) and it's convenient sometimes.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#46

Post by Shlongkikong » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

I broke a meta carpal on my left hand several months ago and dealt with a similar issue. I ended up making a little python script that would use whisper to record with a button press, did some small corrections and then saved it to clipboard. It was very helpful. I did end up needing my regular clipboard as well, so I just had it save and paste with a slightly different shortcut sequence.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#47

Post by justinc8687 » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:49 PM UTC

justinc8687 wrote: post #42

Once their finger movement has been restored, I'd look into various large-split keyboards. The Kinesis Freestyle2 USB version has a large split (20") option that could help. They have screw hole mounts on the bottom which you could likely jerry-rig with a sling to put the keyboard in the proper position. I used it with a custom 3d-printed mount so that I could attach it to the arms of my chair. The wireless version h…

Another thing worth mentioning, if they are a coder, is that this is one of the places where some of the LLM tools can really shine. Many people provide a rough spec, then either (shutter) vibe-code or edit substantially once it produces it.

Having a RSI myself, I find that I can provide very detailed instructions in regular english, for which voice dictation works quite well to Cursor (but any others should work too), then it will produce code that I have to edit very little. For most people this wouldn't be an efficient flow, but it greatly helps me reduce typing, thus is beneficial to me.

With something like that, I believe you could do well pecking around with one hand for edits without needing to do much typing.

On Mac, Karabiner-Elements is incredibly useful to remap things, such that you can enable things like mousekeys or otherwise that would keep from having to move (either) hand very much. It's also a way to do as others have shown on this post and do a mirror layout or add something analogous to layers without having to buy new keyboards.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#48

Post by kldg » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:49 PM UTC

I severely burned most of dominant hand about a decade ago in a grease fire. One-handing the whole keyboard was fine enough (70-100wpm to 15-20wpm) that I didn't bother looking for a better solution, but I was able to use the injured hand enough to press modifier keys as needed. Unless they plan on working while recovering, I'd try out not making any explicit modifications. Good excuse to catch up on movie-watching.

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#49

Post by idahoduncan » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

lburton wrote: post #6

This will depend a bit on the person but for me when I injured my right arm I found that my touch typing muscle memory worked surprisingly well with a toggle key to flip the left side of my keyboard to become a mirrored version of the right side. Each finger was still hitting the same key like it would if I was using my right hand to hit the key but on my left hand. This was fairly easy to accomplish on a QMK firmwar…

I have this set up using kmonad[1], and the following config. Many punctation marks are obviously missing, but I'm sure they could be added with a little thought. The mirrored layout is toggled by holding the space key.

    (defalias
      lhs (tap-next-release spc (layer-toggle ytrewq)))
    
    (deflayer ytrewq
      _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _
           bspc 0    9    8    7    6    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _
           _    p    o    i    u    y    _    _    _    _    _    _    _         _
           ret  ;    l    k    j    h    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _
           lsft /    .    ,    m    n    _    _    _    _    _    _         _    _
      _    _    _    _              _              _    _              _    _    _)

1. https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad

Re: Ask HN: Options for One-Handed Typing

#50

Post by novosel » Tue, Jun 03, 2025, 10:03 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #12

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38400368 DonHopkins on Nov 24, 2023 | parent | context | favorite | on: AI is currently just glorified compression I love David MacKay's brilliant work on the Dasher text input system, which draws deeply from his work on information theory -- imagine Dasher integrated with an IDE and code search and Copilot and language model! "Writing is navigating in the library of all possible…

Excuse me, maybe I am not getting it, why is this downvoted?

I came here to suggest Dasher to OP also.