Technology

Yes I've been using it in some form for about 15 years - FYI it originally started as the MessagEase keyboard; Thumb-Key is an open source replacement (maintained by none-other than Dessalines of Lemmy), so I was using MessagEase for most of that time but Thumb-Key can replicate its layout.

The reason I chose it is because I use Dvorak on desktop, but Dvorak is notoriously bad for one thumb typing so I thought if I was going to learn a new layout I may as well learn something that's optimised for one thumb. As for whether it's faster, I have nothing to really compare it to, I'm not anywhere near as fast as on my physical Dvorak keyboard (which I use significantly more) but I've never used anything else on touch screen.

I'm using it! But only for a week or so. Definitely a skill and not something you can be fast on right away. I'm just getting to the point where I can type some things without looking at the keyboard. Was pretty slow at first, still a little slower than the normal keyboard. I seem to be still in the 'rapid improvement' phase so hopefully will get ahead of the normal keyboard soon.

I tried it for a while but gave up. It may be possible to get up to the typing speed of a regular keyboard, but it's main purpose is to be less error prone than a more traditional touchscreen keyboard. Gboard and others use autocorrect to make up for how easy it is to misclick, but that requires large libraries and (in Gboard's case) telemetry/data collection. Thumb-key's advantage is it's simplicity. It doesnt need autocorrect or predictive typing, because the buttons are large and the gestures are well defined and distinct. You should very rarely accidentally type the wrong character once you're used to it. I never got over that hump, but I'm sure some others have and enjoy typing without looking like we used to be able to do on physical keypads.