Colemak-DH typing test

What Colemak-DH changes, and why

Colemak puts D and H in the two centre columns of the home row. Those are the inner keys your index fingers have to reach sideways for, and H in particular sits next to the very common E, so the pair HE makes your right index finger twitch inward again and again. Colemak's own Wikipedia entry records the criticism, and the user community built the DH modification to fix it.

The Mod-DH project describes the change in a few lines:

• On the left hand, three keys are relocated: D goes down to the bottom row under the index finger, G comes back to its QWERTY spot on the home row, and B moves up to the top row.
• On the right hand, H and M swap places, so M takes the inner home-row spot and H goes to the bottom row.
• On row-staggered boards, the angle mod shifts Z, X and C one position to the left while keeping the same fingers on them.
• No key changes finger compared with standard Colemak.

The result is a home row of A R S T G on the left and M N E I O on the right. R, S, T, N, E, I and O, the letters you type most, keep their Colemak positions.

ANSI or ISO: which variant to choose

The two variants exist because keyboards have two physical shapes. ANSI boards, standard in the US, have a long left Shift. ISO boards, common in the UK and most of Europe, have a short left Shift with an extra key beside it. The Mod-DH project supports both, with a slight variation in how the angle mod is applied on ANSI, so choose the variant that matches your board.

Look at your left Shift key. If it's wide and there's nothing between it and Z, choose Colemak-DH (ANSI). If there's an extra key next to a short Shift, choose Colemak-DH (ISO). Both are in the layout settings. This page uses the ANSI variant, which here leaves Z, X and C in place; the ISO variant applies the angle mod.

You don't need a split or column-staggered keyboard to learn it. The emulation works on an ordinary laptop.

How the emulation behaves

Emulation reads the physical position of each key you press, then substitutes the Colemak-DH character for that position. Your operating system keeps its own layout, which means shortcuts, terminals and every other app behave as they always have. The remapping applies only inside the typing box.

Emulation can't be switched off on this page. That's fine if your system layout is already Colemak-DH, because emulation reads positions, not the letters your system produces. If your keyboard firmware does the remapping, though, your keys arrive already moved and would be remapped a second time, so take tests elsewhere on the site with layout emulation off in settings. And if you use a screen reader that follows the system layout, the emulated keys won't match what it announces.

The keymap under the text shows the DH legend of the next key, which saves you from looking at keycaps that no longer match.

Coming from standard Colemak

If you already type Colemak, the switch is small. Only D, G, B, H and M move, plus Z, X and C if you use the angle mod. Everything else, including the vowels and your strongest letters, stays where your fingers expect it.

A practical way to make the change:

1. Run three tests on the Colemak typing test and note the median as your baseline.
2. Choose Colemak-DH under layout emulation in settings and type short 25-word tests until D and H stop feeling wrong.
3. Check the most-missed keys after each run. Old habits show up as a wrong D or H; those words are worth a few minutes on practice.
4. Compare your DH median with the Colemak baseline each day. Your per-layout personal bests make the comparison easy.

Expect the old positions to intrude for a while, especially on fast words. Don't go back and forth between the layouts during the switch; it slows both down.

Coming from QWERTY

If you've never learned Colemak, there's no reason to learn standard Colemak first. Start straight on DH. You'll be learning a similar number of new positions either way, and DH saves you from building the centre-column habits you'd later have to unlearn. The early weeks are slow on any alternative layout. Use short tests, keep the keymap visible and aim for accuracy above 95% before speed.

For the bigger question of whether an alternative layout is worth it at all, our post QWERTY vs Colemak vs Dvorak goes through the evidence without the hype.