Gallium keyboard layout
Gallium is a 2023 layout from the Alt Keyboard Layouts community with very few same-finger pairs and redirects, in versions for row-staggered and column-staggered keyboards.
- Created by
- GalileoBlues
- Bryson
- Year
- 2023
- Rowstag and Colstag versions
- Finger travel
- −45%
- vs QWERTY
- Home row
- 67%
- of letters, QWERTY 37%
The layouts
Gallium Rowstag, formerly Gallium v2: made for ordinary row-staggered keyboards.
Gallium Rowstag is typed with standard fingering on a row-staggered keyboard; Gallium Colstag is meant for column-staggered keyboards, though its creator says either works on both.
How Gallium measures
Gallium Rowstag typed on 23,331 words of English and compared with QWERTY.
History
- Jan 2023GalileoBlues finishes Gallium, inspired by Nerps and set on improving it in comfort and speed. It ends up very close to Graphite, built at the same time.
- Jul 2023After feedback from row-stagger users, a version for ordinary keyboards follows, changing only the right index column.
- 2026The two are renamed Gallium Rowstag and Gallium Colstag.
Design goal: Break up repetitive patterns and balance effort between the hands, by giving H to the index finger of the vowel hand.
Pros
- Very few redirects, where one hand changes direction mid-word.
- Under 1% of letter pairs are typed with the same finger.
- H under the vowel hand’s index finger brings the two hands close to an even share of the work.
Cons
- By its creator’s account it needs more pinky and ring-finger work than Colemak.
- It does noticeably worse on complex vocabulary, where pairs like HY and PH come up.
- Nearly identical to Graphite, and its Windows and macOS packages are out of date.
Gallium compared
Against QWERTY and other modern optimised layouts, ranked by finger travel per 1,000 words.
| Layout | Finger travel | vs QWERTY | Home row | Same finger | Alternation | Left hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gallium RowstagTHIS PAGE | 71.6 m | −45% | 67% | 0.9% | 66% | 48% |
| Gallium ColstagTHIS PAGE | 71.6 m | −45% | 67% | 0.9% | 66% | 48% |
| APT | 71.7 m | −45% | 65% | 1.3% | 61% | 48% |
| Nerps | 71.8 m | −45% | 67% | 1.2% | 66% | 48% |
| Graphite | 72.0 m | −45% | 67% | 0.9% | 66% | 48% |
| Hands Down Neu | 75.3 m | −42% | 65% | 1.0% | 68% | 51% |
| Semimak | 75.3 m | −42% | 64% | 0.9% | 64% | 47% |
| Sturdy | 76.1 m | −41% | 63% | 1.0% | 61% | 44% |
| QWERTY | 130.0 m | — | 37% | 6.5% | 55% | 57% |
Gallium was created by GalileoBlues (Bryson) and finished in January 2023.
It moves your fingers less. On 23,331 words of English, finger travel was −45% against QWERTY, 67% of letters landed on the home row against QWERTY’s 37%, and same-finger pairs were 0.9% against 6.5%. Less movement does not guarantee more speed, and switching takes weeks of practice.
Gallium Rowstag is typed with standard fingering on a row-staggered keyboard; Gallium Colstag is meant for column-staggered keyboards, though its creator says either works on both.
Yes. Choose Gallium Rowstag as your keyboard layout and the on-screen keyboard and hands show where every key is.