About.

What Dvorak is

August Dvorak and William Dealey patented the layout in 1936 after years of studying which keys English uses. They put the ten most common letters on the home row: a o e u i d h t n s. About eight in ten keystrokes in ordinary English land on these keys. The same eight positions on QWERTY catch closer to three in ten.

The home row alone covers around 70 percent of English text. Vowels sit on the left hand. Consonants sit on the right. Strong fingers handle frequent letters, and awkward stretches like Y, P, F live up on the top row where they cost you the least.

The cost is relearning. Every word you type for the first month feels unfamiliar. The benefit is less travel, more rhythm, and for many people less strain. Final speed comes down to how much you practice, not the layout.

Why this trainer

Most typing sites cover every layout and lean on word-frequency drills. That works for a touch-typist whose fingers already know where each key lives. A new Dvorak user doesn't. Throwing the alphabet at hands that haven't memorized the home row trains nothing but frustration.

This trainer begins with the eight home-row keys. It widens the character set only as your speed climbs. You won't be typing real words on day one. You'll be learning where each key sits. Real words come once your fingers stop hunting.

How the lessons work

Home Row. Random combinations of a, o, e, u, h, t, n, s. Drill these until you can hit them without looking. Aim for 90 percent accuracy before you switch lessons.

Common Words. A 180-word frequency list. Once the home row feels automatic, vocabulary becomes the next thing to chase.

Pangram. One sentence that uses every letter. A way to put the whole layout in one drill instead of slicing it into clean buckets.

Adaptive. The lesson that picks its own difficulty. It starts on the home row and watches your live WPM. Cross 18 WPM at 90 percent accuracy and it adds d, i, r to the pool. Cross 28 WPM and it widens further. At 38 WPM you graduate to real words. At 50 WPM, pangrams. Each tier unlocks once and stays unlocked for the session. A bad streak won't push you back down.

The on-screen keyboard

The keyboard at the bottom of the home page mirrors the Dvorak layout. The little letter under each key shows where your QWERTY brain expects that key to be. If your operating system is set to Dvorak, the QWERTY hints turn off. You can override the autodetect from the gear menu.

The eight home-row keys carry a small tint and a dot. The next key you need to press lights up in red. The last key you pressed (right or wrong) gets a flash highlight so your peripheral vision can read what your fingers did.

Infinite mode

Three lines of text at a time. As you finish the top line, all three slide up by one row and a new line drops in at the bottom. It feels like a typewriter that never runs out of paper. Pair it with Adaptive and the difficulty ramp lines up with the rhythm of typing chunk after chunk.

Scope

Dvorak Practice has no accounts, scoreboards, streaks, or notifications. The settings you adjust live in one browser on one device. Clear your data and everything resets. We keep nothing else.

The privacy notes cover what the hosting platform sees and how advertising works. Reach the operator through the contact form.