Recommended Layouts

There is no “best” keyboard layout, just like there is no such thing as the best headphones, best car, or best mattress. Keyboard layouts are all about compromises and trade-offs, and choosing a layout is more often an exercise in comparing weaknesses rather than comparing strengths. In other words, when choosing among well-optimized layouts, the choice often comes down to which of several sets of problems you would rather live with.

The recommendations below consist of layouts that are well-known in the community and commonly suggested in the AKL Discord. Of course, popularity is an imperfect proxy metric for quality. Just because a layout didn’t make it onto this list doesn’t mean it’s not good, and there are many obscure, unused layouts that are perfectly viable for the right audience.

Overall Picks

Gallium and Graphite

If you are new to alt keyboard layouts, Gallium is the usual recommendation in the AKL Discord:

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The main issues with Gallium (and more generally, most layouts with NRTS HAEI home keys) are on the right index, as seen in words such as “happy,” “physics,” and “python.” This might make it unsuitable for people such as physicists and Python programmers. Another issue is the B on the pinky top row, which causes uncomfortable patterns with R and M, as in “broad” and “thumb.”

Gallium was originally based on Graphite, which is also a strong general recommendation:

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The biggest difference between Gallium and Graphite is in punctuation placement. Graphite uses non-standard shift pairs; typing shift+, outputs a question mark ?, not a left angle bracket <. Remapping shift pairs is straightforward with the right software, but some people prefer not to deal with since it adds a layer of complexity to using keyboard shortcuts. For example, if an app has a shortcut assigned to ctrl+shift+/, you actually need to press ctrl+shift+, on Graphite to trigger it.

As for the impact of Graphite’s punctuation on typing:

• Graphite has lower right pinky use due to putting the most common punctuation, ., on a different finger.
• Contractions such as “you’ll” and “we’d” feel different on Graphite; on Gallium, these involve an uncomfortable stretch between the middle and ring fingers—a scissor—whereas on Graphite, they require reaching towards the far center of the keyboard—a lateral stretch.

Gallium and Graphite are designed primarily to perform well across all of the main metrics used in the Alt Keyboard Layouts Discord: same-finger bigrams and skipgrams, scissors, lateral stretches, total redirects, and weak redirects. As such, they is often referred to as “balanced” layouts—their stats are decent across the board, but none are especially good and none are especially bad. The other layouts in the recommendation list tend to be more opinionated, meaning that they aim to sacrifice some of the main metrics for other characteristics. As you get a feel for what you like and don’t like in a layout, you may want to choose a different layout that optimizes for the specific motions you find comfortable.

Pine

Pine (v4) has a similar overall feel to Gallium and Graphite, but without the problems with PHY, BR, and MB:

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The main issue with Pine is the high usage on the weaker fingers of the right hand, especially the YI pinky. This leads to uncomfortable patterns in words such as “hey,” “yeah,” and “playing.” This can be a big turnoff for beginners because the right pinky is barely used at all on QWERTY.

Sturdy

Whereas Gallium, Graphite, and Pine v4 tend to alternate hands with each keystroke, Sturdy tends to alternate hands every other keystroke, making it high in 2-rolls:

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There is no consensus on whether alternation or rolls is better; it is mainly up to personal preference. If you prefer rolls, you may like Sturdy better than Gallium or Graphite.

Sturdy’s main issue is the placement of K, as it interacts uncomfortably with surrounding keys in words such as “task,” “milk,” and “back.” And in general, Sturdy uses the left ring heavily, so it is not suitable for people with a weak left ring finger.

Sturdy has what is sometimes referred to as a “Whorf index”—named after the iconic 2021 layout that first demonstrated that a low-usage, high-movement index is optimal for minimizing consecutive use of the same finger (same-finger bigrams). While this setup is optimal in the average case, Whorf indexes have pathological edge cases where they get used several times in quick succession, like in the word “copying.”

Canary

Canary is another long-standing recommendation that is high in 2-rolls:

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It is meant to be used with angle mod, an alternate fingering for the left hand bottom row. There is also a variant for traditional fingering:

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Canary is relatively well-known (as far as obscure alt layouts go) because it was introduced in a tournament with cash prizes on the Monkeytype Discord. It was designed to be a decent layout for a general audience. Its biggest problem is the scissor WR, found in words such as “write” and “wrong.” Aside from specific patterns, the other quirk is that its finger usage distribution is very uneven, with high usage of the left index and right hand while the other left hand fingers are not used much. Due to the uneven usage, there is a high concentration of same-finger skipgrams—two keystrokes by the same finger separated by one keystroke—on the left index, right index, and right middle fingers.

Kuntum and Kuntem

Kuntum is an angle mod layout that is unique in that it has no major problem keys:

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Despite its lack of major problems, Kuntum is considered a “niche” layout because of two distinctive quirks:

• Kuntum assigns high usage to the left pinky, since T is the most common consonant and tt is a common repeat. In exchange, Kuntum offers low pinky movement, since V and Z are both very uncommon. However, most people are not used to such high pinky usage because the pinkies are so underutilized on QWERTY, making it hard to recommend as a first step into alt layouts.
• Unlike Canary, which has different variants for angle mod and traditional fingering, Kuntum requires angle mod. There is no way to “un-angle” Kuntum or adapt Kuntum for ortholinear and column-staggered keyboards. This means that Kuntum can only be used on row-staggered keyboards. (If you’re not sure what kind of keyboard you have, it is almost certainly row-staggered because that is the standard.)

Kuntem modifies Kuntum to further lean into its characteristic combination of high pinky usage and low pinky movement:

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E is by far the most common letter, and to avoid overloading the right pinky, the more common punctuation keys . and , are moved to other fingers. This makes Kuntem a great choice for people with strong pinkies, such as musicians.

Thumb Alpha

Most people press space with only one thumb, meaning the other thumb is completely unused. Because standard keyboards have a wide spacebar that covers both thumbs’ natural resting positions, many people aren’t aware that better utilizing both thumbs is an option. Many enthusiast boards get rid of the large spacebar, putting multiple small keys in its place. A thumb alpha layout is a layout that places a letter on one of these extra thumb keys. This leads to more comfortable movement patterns by opening up more options to arrange the remaining keys. However, adopting a thumb alpha layout comes with downsides:

• Because using a thumb alpha layout requires a dedicated, non-standard external keyboard, it won’t be possible to use the same layout when you are away from it, such as when you are traveling with only a laptop. (There are ways around this, such as using wide mod and putting a letter on the right alt or right command key, but this adds an additional learning curve and knock-on effects and doesn’t work if the layout puts a letter on the left thumb and doesn’t mirror well.)
• Putting a letter on the thumb takes up a space that could be used for a different thumb key: for example, a modifier key, layer key, or something else such as enter or backspace. You may decide that with all the functions you can assign to the thumb, a dedicated letter key may not be for you.

Night and Dusk-WP

Night is the most commonly recommended thumb alpha layout on the AKL Discord:

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Night is heavily optimized for accuracy- and speed-related metrics, especially SFB, SFS, and weak redirects. These patterns are especially impactful when typing quickly—100 WPM and higher—and may not be as relevant for those aiming for a lower speed. Like Sturdy, it has a “Whorf index,” a high-movement index that is optimal in the average case but behaves very poorly in a few edge cases such as “copying,” “wagyu,” and “waypoint.”

Another pain point with Night is the high lateral stretches, mainly from Y and P, including in some very common words such as “you.” The word “people” is especially bad, since it requires the right hand to maintain an uncomfortable stretch between the two Ps.

Dusk-WP, based on Dusk (and generally considered slightly better than Dusk), is another layout with similar design goals:

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Night and Dusk-WP are both heavily optimized for accuracy- and speed-related metrics, and they use many of the same columns. The most notable difference is the relative usage of the index and middle fingers on the left hand. Night has higher usage of the left index, whereas Dusk and Dusk-WP use the left middle more.

Like Night, Dusk-WP has a lot of lateral stretches, mostly due to the M in words like “come” and “man.” And the Whorf index is present in Dusk-WP too, though the problem is on the left hand as opposed to the right hand in Night.

Bunya

Bunya has a similar feel to Gallium, but adapted to put S on the thumb, giving it exceptionally low SFB, SFS, scissor bigrams and skipgrams:

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Gallium’s main problems are fixed on Bunya: the PHY right index (“physics,” “python”), and MB/ML (“thumb,” “calm”). However, the BR half-scissor (“broad”) remains an issue.

As for drawbacks, ss is a common repeat, making it less than ideal for a thumb key because the thumb is slower than the other fingers. Additionally, Bunya has high lateral stretches, as in the word “you.”

Birdie

For very small keyboards with two keys on the pinky columns, Birdie has a little bit of a cult following within the AKL Discord. Like Kuntem, it assigns high usage keys to the pinkies in exchange for low pinky movement; the reduced keyboard form factor and R on the thumb further leans into the movement minimization.

Racket

Racket has very low SFB, SFS, and lateral stretches and no major problem keys:

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The main downside of Racket is a finger usage distribution that favors the weaker fingers, especially the left ring, more than most other layouts. Additionally, having both S and F on the left pinky may be too much, though this can be solved by swapping F and Q.

Out of the Box

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Colemak is the best option among the layouts that are included with every major operating system. macOS, Linux, and Windows (starting in Windows 11 24H2) all provide the ability to use Colemak without installing additional software. If you frequently use a managed computer (e.g. provided by your school or work) or a device that does not support custom keyboard layouts (e.g. an iPad), Colemak is the best option that you can use across all your devices.

As an older layout, Colemak’s design goals are very different from the other recommendations. It keeps ten letters in their QWERTY positions, only moves E and P to the opposite hand, and mostly maintains QWERTY punctuation. All of this makes it easier to switch from QWERTY. Additionally, Colemak keeps ZXCV in the bottom left to make common keyboard shortcuts for undo, redo, copy, and paste easy to reach.

On the flip side, because Colemak is constrained by many of QWERTY’s design decisions, it is also much less optimized than the other recommendations in this list. Colemak’s two biggest problems are:

• High weak redirects, like in “you” and “was,” which negatively affects accuracy at high typing speeds, and
• High lateral stretches, including in very common words such as “the” and “here,” which many people find uncomfortable, especially if your hands are on the smaller side.

If you are able to tweak your computer to use custom layouts and willing to commit to something completely different from QWERTY, the other recommendations in this list provide a better overall typing experience.

Other Popular Options

Layouts in the Hands Down™ family have very different design goals compared to layouts from the AKL Discord, so they perform poorly when compared on AKL’s preferred metrics. They tend to have moderate SFBs (affects speed), high scissors (affects comfort), and high weak redirects (affects accuracy). On the flip side, they excel at in-roll to out-roll ratio, and many of the hardened metals variants offer exceptionally low pinky usage compared to AKL layouts.

Engram, along with its descendants Engrammer, Hands Down™ Promethium, and Enthium, all have high weak redirects, affecting accuracy at high speeds. Out of the Engram family, Enthium performs the best on AKL metrics, with low SFB, SFS, and lateral stretches. However, its 2u SFBs are high for a thumb alpha (e.g. “edge,” “calm”), and it has a high concentration of its otherwise low lateral stretches on the left pinky due to having B on the far outer column (e.g. “by”). Scissors are a mixed bag, as proximal row changes are low, but some may find issues with words such as “play” and “glad.”

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Dvorak has historically been the most popular alt layout, but it has twice as many SFBs as Colemak, making it tough to recommend as an out-of-the-box option. The high-usage, high-movement right pinky is problematic in words such as “sells” and “assess.” The left index is even more high-usage and high-movement, as seen in words like “pixel,” “hiking,” “skipping.” The only reason it might be worth considering is its excellent positions for HJKL for users of Vim keybindings, which are far better than on Colemak.

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Layouts to Avoid

Layouts that prioritize similarity to QWERTY, such as CarpalX, Norman and Workman, make too many sacrifices in order to remain similar to QWERTY. Out of this class of layouts, Colemak is both better than the alternatives and available by default on all major operating systems. As for the popular Colemak mod Colemak Mod-DH, it does fix one of the major issues with Colemak—namely, the high lateral stretches—but unlike Colemak, it does not come preinstalled on any OS. If you are willing to install additional software to use a custom keyboard layout, there are better layouts to consider that also fix the weak redirects.

Halmak has many issues that make it a non-recommendation. Its emphasis on low center column usage pushes several common consonants onto the same fingers as vowels, resulting in high-usage, high-movement pinkies and ring fingers on both sides. The DOK right ring is the worst offender, creating same-finger trigrams in common words like “wood” and “book,” and the other three weak fingers also have abnormally high SFBs and SFSs.

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Further Reading

A guide to alt keyboard layouts (why, how, which one?)

AKL Discord thread on beginner recommendations