The 4 Best Apps to Improve Your Typing Speed on Linux
Reading Time: 5 minutesYou can easily master touch typing on your Linux desktop. All you need is a little bit of persistence and one of these typing tutor apps.
Typing fast and accurately is an essential skill in the 21st century, as dictation software isn’t yet up to the task of ridding your work of superfluous ‘ums,’ ‘ahs,’ repetition, and random punctuation.
Typing tutors can help increase your speed to the level where words flow from your fingertips efficiently and smoothly. Here are the best typing tutors for Linux:
1. KTouch
KTouch is the only GUI-driven typing tutor on this list and was developed by The KDE Education Project with the aim of improving your touch typing skills in multiple languages.
If you’re a visual learner, and unfamiliar with your keyboard layout, KTouch shows you a color-coded representation of your keyboard on the screen and can highlight which key needs to be hit next. It supports multiple keyboard layouts and languages.
Skeuomorphic representations on analog dials show you the current time, your characters per minute rate, and your accuracy.
To install KTouch on Debian and derivatives:
sudo apt install ktouch
On Arch-based Linux distros:
sudo pacman -S ktouch
To install KTouch on Fedora, RHEL, and Rocky Linux, run:
sudo dnf install ktouch
If you’re not running KDE, you’ll be facing a hefty download of at least 170MB, which for a simple typing game, is quite a lot.
Once installed, you can start KTouch through your system menu.
Before you start training, KTouch will ask you for your name and previous typing experience, before pitching appropriately leveled lessons for you. Further lessons are unlocked as you progress.
2. Typon
Typon is our favorite of the terminal-based typing trainer tools as it tracks your progress over time, so you can see how you’ve improved, and boasts an easy and intuitive keyboard-driven interface.
With Typon, you can practice typing any customized quote, and even have some extra fun by competing against your previous best records.
Typon relies on ncurses for its Terminal User Interface (TUI). To install ncurses on Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev
To install ncurses on Fedora and Red Hat derivatives:
sudo yum install ncurses-devel
Installing ncurses on Arch Linux is easy.
sudo pacman -S ncurses
ncurses is also available in the Arch User Repository (AUR).
You will be cloning the Typon repository from GitHub so make sure you have Git installed on your system. To install Git on Ubuntu or Debian, run:
sudo apt install git
Now clone the Typon GitHub repository with:
git clone https://github.com/ihsuy/Typon
Move into the new directory:
cd Typon/Typon
You can now compile Typon and install it to your path by running:
make && make install
Start Typon in any terminal by entering:
typon
Running Typon without any arguments will present a string of green text within a border. The aim is to accurately copy the text as fast as you can using the keyboard. If you make a mistake, the text will turn red.
Finish the exercise, and Typon will display your Words Per Minute (WPM), whether you’ve set any records, and elapsed time. You can then choose to replay the exercise by pressing r or to continue by hitting Space.
Typon also offers a ‘Challenge mode’, which you can access by pressing 0. With challenge mode active, an opponent text cursor will appear and start a race with you. Rather than an AI or computer-controlled competitor, you’re actually competing against your own best record for a particular passage. If you haven’t completed that challenge before, this option won’t be available.
You can access the context-sensitive menu system at any time with Tab to move on to the next challenge, quit, or see the help file.
The challenge finishes automatically when you reach the end of a passage.
Typon comes with 99 quotes or passages on which you can practice your skills. They are usually inspirational, with sayings from Nelson Mandela, Harper Lee, Francis Bacon, and the video game character, Robert House, featuring prominently.
If you want to add your own passages to Typon, navigate to the quotes directory. If you cloned Typon into your home directory, you can get there with:
cd Typon/Typon/quotes
Passages are contained in individual text files with the naming convention: quote[ID].txt, where [ID] is a positive integer between 0 and 3001.
Create a new exercise by selecting an unused number and creating a new text file with nano:
nano quote666.txt
Paste your desired text into the file, then save and exit nano with Ctrl + O, then Ctrl + X.
Typon will select your quotes randomly, or you can choose them manually by starting a new exercise, then pressing ‘–‘ (hyphen), followed by the integer of your quote.
3. tt
tt is another typing test tool for your terminal, and by default, eschews the practice of presenting you with exciting phrases, narratives, or quotes. Instead, tt randomly selects 50 words from the top 1,000 words of the English language to create a test. At the end of each test, tt will provide you with some statistics.
To install tt, open a terminal and enter the following:
sudo curl -L https://github.com/lemnos/tt/releases/download/v0.4.2/tt-linux -o /usr/local/bin/tt && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/tt
sudo curl -o /usr/share/man/man1/tt.1.gz -L https://github.com/lemnos/tt/releases/download/v0.4.2/tt.1.gz
Start tt with:
tt
You can specify the number of words to type with the -n switch and specify how many groups of words you want with -g.
tt -n 5 -g 2
Running the aforementioned command, for instance, will give you two groups each containing five words.
If you do want to practice with phrases, starting tt with the following command will give you some short quotes to try. Other languages are not available:
tt -quotes en
If you have jq installed, tt can also pull quotes from an online database, and present them to you to try:
curl http://api.quotable.io/random|jq '[.text=.content|.attribution=.author]'|tt -quotes -
If you plan on using this command a lot, you may want to consider setting a command-line alias.
4. cli-typer
cli-typer is super simple to use and configure and allows you to create your own list of words to use, or just use the words contained in your local dictionary files.
Before you run cli-typer, you need to install Node.js and npm. Once that’s done, clone the cli-typer GitHub repository, then move into the new directory.
git clone https://github.com/balzss/cli-typer.git
cd cli-typer
You can now install cli-typer with:
sudo npm install -g
You can start cli-typer from any directory with:
cli-typer
You can do some basic test configurations with switches. -t sets the allowed time in seconds, -w gives the number of words per line, and -i allows you to set the path to a wordlist with one word per line.
That’s it. At the end of a test, cli-typer will give you some useful statistics for the most recent session.
You Can Use Typing Test Tools for More Than Just Typing!
For generations, school teachers have insisted that one of the best ways to learn new material is to copy it out—whether from a blackboard, an overhead projector, or a computer screen.
If you use a typing trainer that accepts quotes or custom passages, you can entertain and educate yourself, while improving your typing skills. Why not start watching excellent Linux tutorials from YouTube within the command line, and turn yourself into a terminal wizard?