BEAKL keyboard layout
BEAKL, the Balanced Effortless Advanced Keyboard Layout, is a family of layouts from 2016 on that give each finger a workload matched to its strength and keep the pinkies nearly idle.
- Created by
- Xay Voong
- With Ian Douglas
- Year
- 2016
- BEAKL 27 now recommended
- Finger travel
- −33%
- vs QWERTY
- Home row
- 59%
- of letters, QWERTY 37%
The layout
BEAKL 15, the best-known version: vowels on the left, consonants on the right. Its punctuation and number layers are not shown, so punctuation keeps US Shift pairs.
BEAKL was designed for programmable keyboards with layers. Its letters are shown here on a standard keyboard with standard fingering.
How BEAKL measures
BEAKL 15 typed on 23,331 words of English and compared with QWERTY.
History
- 2016Xay Voong, after fifteen years on Dvorak, starts designing around how slow the pinky keys are, with the AdNW optimiser. Ian Douglas joins the work.
- LaterBEAKL 15 combines the consonant half of BEAKL 9 with the vowel half of BEAKL 10.
- 2021BEAKL 27 replaces it as the recommended version.
Design goal: Keep the common letters in a block under the ring, middle and index fingers, and keep load off the pinkies and the centre columns.
Pros
- A strict effort budget: each pinky column and inner index column carries only about 5% of key presses.
- Dedicated punctuation and number layers keep the fingers in the home block for symbols and digits.
- Vowels on the left and consonants on the right give strong hand alternation.
Cons
- A moving target, with dozens of numbered versions and a recommended one that keeps changing.
- Works best with layers on a programmable keyboard.
- Moves almost every key, with a small community and an official site that is hard to reach.
BEAKL compared
Against QWERTY and other research and ergonomic layouts, ranked by finger travel per 1,000 words.
| Layout | Finger travel | vs QWERTY | Home row | Same finger | Alternation | Left hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Halmak | 69.2 m | −47% | 65% | 3.3% | 66% | 51% |
| MTGAP | 70.6 m | −46% | 65% | 1.3% | 63% | 49% |
| Capewell | 72.0 m | −45% | 67% | 1.8% | 50% | 49% |
| Arensito | 72.4 m | −44% | 67% | 1.6% | 52% | 52% |
| Soul | 73.2 m | −44% | 67% | 1.6% | 56% | 48% |
| RSTHD | 73.2 m | −44% | 70% | 1.2% | 57% | 45% |
| BEAKL 15THIS PAGE | 87.4 m | −33% | 59% | 3.4% | 68% | 49% |
| QWERTY | 130.0 m | — | 37% | 6.5% | 55% | 57% |
BEAKL was created by Xay Voong in 2016 and developed with Ian Douglas.
It moves your fingers less. On 23,331 words of English, finger travel was −33% against QWERTY, 59% of letters landed on the home row against QWERTY’s 37%, and same-finger pairs were 3.4% against 6.5%. Less movement does not guarantee more speed, and switching takes weeks of practice.
BEAKL was designed for programmable keyboards with layers. Its letters are shown here on a standard keyboard with standard fingering.
Yes. Choose BEAKL 15 as your keyboard layout and the on-screen keyboard and hands show where every key is.