colemak
a twenty-lesson course for the colemak layout, built around colemak rather than translated from a qwerty one. free, no account, nothing tracked, and your progress stays in this browser.
learn every key
most people settle all 20 lessons in 6–9 hours of practice — a few visits per lesson, never twice in one day.
home rowlessons 1–5
top rowlessons 6–10
bottom rowlessons 11–14
shift & capitalslesson 15
numberslessons 16–18
punctuationlessons 19–20
why the lessons are different
colemak’s home row is a r s t and n e i o, which holds four of the six most common letters in english. that changes what a beginner can type and how soon: by lesson four you are writing rest, train, note, stone — real words, from resting position, with no reaches at all. a qwerty course at the same point is still on sad flask, because its home row is a s d f · j k l ;.
the apostrophe also stays where qwerty has it, on the home row under your right little finger. so contractions arrive in the first week here — isn’t, it’s, don’t — rather than waiting until lesson nineteen. and z x c v keep their qwerty places, which colemak did on purpose, so undo, cut, copy and paste stay where your hands already expect them.
set colemak up on your machine first
this site draws the colemak layout and expects colemak characters — it does not remap your keys. the remapping belongs to your operating system, for two reasons: muscle memory learned inside one browser tab works nowhere else on your computer, and if you have already switched at the os level, a site that remapped on top of it would double the change and produce nonsense.
all four are built in. none of them needs software beyond, at most, the official colemak package on windows.
windows
Settings → Time & language → Language & region. Under your language, open the three-dot menu → Language options → Add a keyboard, and pick “United States-Colemak” if it is listed. If it is not, install the official Colemak package from colemak.com, then add it the same way. Switch between layouts with the Windows key + Space.
macos
System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Input Sources → Edit → the + button. Under English, choose Colemak — macOS has shipped it built in for years, so nothing needs downloading. Tick “Show Input menu in menu bar” and you can switch layouts from the menu bar or with Control + Space.
linux
Colemak ships with the standard X keyboard map on every mainstream distribution. In GNOME: Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → + → English → English (Colemak). On KDE: System Settings → Input Devices → Keyboard → Layouts. From a terminal, setxkbmap us -variant colemak does the same for the current session.
chromebook
Settings → Device → Keyboard → Change input settings → Input methods → Add input method, then choose “US Colemak keyboard”. Switch between layouts with Ctrl + Shift + Space. On a managed school device this may be locked by an administrator.
keep the physical keycaps as they are. moving them turns the board into a chart you look at, and looking down is the habit the whole course exists to break.
what the course covers
20 lessons: the home row first, then the reaches, then capitals, the number row taught anchor-first, and the punctuation marks that need shift. progress for colemak is kept separately from any qwerty practice you have done here — per-key accuracy does not transfer between layouts, so mixing them would make both readings dishonest. switching back finds your qwerty history exactly where you left it.
the rest of the site — free practice, the daily line, the bookshelf, your own pasted text — works in colemak too. it draws whichever layout you last used and keeps its own record for it.
the qwerty course · the dvorak course · typing guides · printable charts