Keyboard Guide
SplitWells is designed for the Kinesis Advantage—a split ergonomic keyboard that changed the way I type.
Interactive Kinesis Advantage layout. Toggle between base and shift layers above.
Why Split Keyboards?
Traditional keyboards force your hands into an unnatural position. Your wrists bend outward (ulnar deviation), your forearms rotate inward (pronation), and your shoulders hunch forward. Over time, this leads to strain, fatigue, and potentially RSI.
Split keyboards fix this by separating the two halves, allowing you to position each hand naturally. Your wrists stay straight, your shoulders relax, and typing becomes more comfortable—especially during long sessions.
The Kinesis Advantage
The Kinesis Advantage takes split keyboards further with several unique features:
Contoured Key Wells
Keys sit in curved wells that follow your fingers' natural arc. Each column is a different height, so your fingers don't have to stretch or curl unnaturally.
Ortholinear Columns
Keys are arranged in straight columns instead of staggered rows. This matches how your fingers actually move—straight up and down, not diagonally.
Thumb Clusters
Instead of a single spacebar, each thumb gets a cluster of frequently-used keys: Space, Enter, Backspace, Delete, and modifiers. Your strongest fingers finally do more than just hit space.
Built-in Tenting
The keyboard is slightly angled (tented) to reduce forearm pronation. Your hands rest in a more natural, handshake-like position.
Learning Curve
Switching to the Kinesis Advantage means relearning to type. The layout is different, the key positions are different, and muscle memory from traditional keyboards doesn't transfer well.
Expect 2-4 weeks to reach usable speeds, and 1-2 months to approach your previous typing speed. It's frustrating at first, but worth it. This is exactly why SplitWells exists—to help you through this transition efficiently.
The Base/Shift Layer System
In SplitWells, you can practice both the base layer (unshifted characters like a, 1, ;) and the shift layer (shifted characters like A, !, :) independently.
This is intentional. On a traditional keyboard, you might get away with sloppy shift-key usage. On the Kinesis, where thumbs handle Space/Enter/Backspace and pinkies handle Shift, you need clean, deliberate shift coordination. Practice both layers.
Learning Order
If you're new to the Kinesis, here's a recommended progression:
- Home row — a s d f j k l ;
- Top row — q w e r t y u i o p
- Bottom row — z x c v b n m , . /
- Numbers — 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
- Shifted characters — uppercase, symbols
- Special keys — brackets, quotes, etc.
Use the "Next" button on the home page to automatically select the next recommended keys based on this learning order.