Keyboard shortcuts on the practice surface

The practice surface is meant to be used without the mouse. A small set of shortcuts handles starting, stopping, and resetting sessions. Once you know them, the surface feels closer to a terminal than to a web page.

During a session

Tab -- restart the current session with new content. If you misread the line and want to start fresh, this is the key.

Esc -- exit the session. Drops you back to the toolbar. Anything you typed counts toward your stats up to the point you pressed it.

Backspace -- correct the last character. Standard. Each correction shows in the live ticker as a red cell.

Ctrl+Backspace -- delete the last word. Useful when you spot a typo a few characters back.

Between sessions

F11 -- enter or exit fullscreen mode. The site supports fullscreen on every modern browser; in fullscreen the toolbar and footer hide and the typing surface fills the window.

F (when the surface has focus) -- focus mode. Hides the live stats and the toolbar without going fullscreen. Cleaner than fullscreen for a quick distraction-free run.

Tab (when the surface has focus, no session running) -- start a new session.

Toolbar shortcuts

You can change mode mid-toolbar without clicking.

T -- switch to time mode. W -- switch to words mode. Q -- switch to quote mode. Z -- switch to zen mode.

After pressing one of these, type a number to set the duration or word count, then press Enter to start. So T 6 0 Enter starts a 60-second time test. W 1 0 0 Enter starts a 100-word session.

Settings shortcuts

S (anywhere on the site) -- open the settings modal. Esc (when the modal is open) -- close it.

The modal opens as an overlay on whatever page you were on, so you can change a setting without leaving practice.

What not to bother with

There is no shortcut for switching word lists. The dropdown is the way. The reason: switching lists clears the current session, and that is destructive enough to deserve an explicit click.

There is no shortcut for the achievements page or the stats page. They are full pages with charts; visiting them is a context switch by design.

A note on browser shortcuts

Browsers reserve some keys: Cmd-W to close the tab, Cmd-T to open a new one, Cmd-R to reload. The site cannot override these. If a typing-related shortcut clashes, the browser wins. (This is why we use Tab and not Cmd-T for restart.)

If your browser intercepts F11 for something else, fullscreen has a button on the toolbar.