23
votes
US keyboards don't have enough keys, so I switched to Japanese - HyperJIS
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- Title
- HyperJIS: One Keyboard Layout, Any Apple Machine
- Published
- Apr 15 2026
- Word count
- 957 words
I’ve done the same thing, and for the same reasons. It’s nice to have the same keyboard layout over multiple devices and desk setups. I often work from weird setups (proper desk with a keyboard, mobile with iPad and keyboard, only laptop, phone + keyboard). Having a unified layout on all of these setups is so nice.
Replicability was the main driver. I went through a bunch of keyboards and layouts and kept asking: what do I actually need? A Hyper key, tiling shortcuts, Vim navigation, and accent keys for Italian. A standard US board doesn't have room for all of that without conflicts.
JIS solved it because those extra keys (Eisuu, Kana, ¥) are unused real estate on a US-oriented setup. I get everything I need and keep full ANSI/QWERTY compatibility for media editing and programming shortcuts. Then I expanded the accent system for French, Spanish, and German since the architecture was already there.
Side benefit: absolutely no coworker or boss can start using my machine without going slightly insane and giving up. The arrow keys being tiling keys is usually the breaking point.
To note: the Hyper Key is my launcher key with Keyboard Maestro. Hyper+T is Kitty as my terminal, Hyper+B is the browser, Hyper+C brings up clipboard history, etc.
I built a Karabiner config that uses the extra keys on Apple's JIS keyboard for Vim navigation, a Hyper key, and multilingual accents. It's very niche and opinionated, but it has been really helpful for me, and I've been using it for almost five years, so I thought I'd share it.
I've recently finished a similar swap to a custom layout and have been considering writing up all my thoughts on it.
Some of the changes are just mind-blowingly obvious in retrospect (the ctrl/esc instead of caps-lock should just be the standard) and I've surprised myself with how much use I've gotten out of having a 'compose' key for accents or special characters.
That said, some habits are hard to break. I tried using a thumb positioned backspace and could not change my muscle memory for that.
Wonderign if also other people don't use the normal qwerty / qwertz keyboard layout. Because I've been "learning" the Workman Layout since 2022 (in covid i had a lot of time and just thought I wanted to learn a new and "optimized" and faster layout (I am prob about the same speed now). But anyways?
Do any of you humans and other creatures use any other layouts than qwertz / qwerty ???
On physical keyboards I've only ever used QWERTY; it's fine and I learned to touch type pretty fast as a kid (thanks Mavis Beacon!). I never felt like a different layout would make me faster or more comfortable (typing speed was never the bottleneck for me), so I never dug into Dvorak or any of the other alternatives. (Edit: another comment reminded me, I do always replace Caps-Lock with an extra Ctrl key, makes Emacs (and everything else) more comfy)
Mobile is a different matter though. When I was young, my dad had a Palm Pilot with Graffiti on it, which I thought was pretty cool. When modern touchscreens came around I was baffled that everyone standardized on cramming full QWERTY keyboards into tiny two-inch surfaces, instead of something like Graffiti. The keys were so small! Even T9 made more sense, at least then you had tactile feedback.
My dad (someone who's always had a passion for UX) quickly found an alternative in MessageEase/ANIHORTES: a 3x3 grid with the most common letters available with a single tap, and the rest a directional swipe. These days I use the open-source keyboard Thumb-Key which implements the same concept.
Apparently a similar system is used in Japan, I think I've seen it referred to as a "flick" keyboard. It's precise enough that I can generally type single-handedly at a rate fast enough that I don't feel the need for autocomplete/autocorrect. Which is good, because I don't like the way modern autocomplete systems make me feel.
I've never knew or heard anything about the flick or thumb keyboard. Currently on my phone I use the 3x3 grid since my current phone is an old flip phone. It automatically tries to detect the words and completes them which works pretty well since I don't use my phone that much !!! (which is kind of why I switched to a flip phone)
For whatever reason, I switched to Dvorak in high school. This was, I think, the perfect time to do it, because I wasn't all that good at QWERTY (and hadn't learned correct finger placement for touch typing, which would have been hard to correct), and I had a bunch of free time to drill touch typing (which I did, because I was and am a nerd).
Ultimately I think it was great. I do think that Dvorak reduces RSI, especially in the pinkies, and my wife actually switched to it as an adult after developing some RSIs and switching helped considerably. I don't really know if I'd recommend it, cause it's goofy and it genuinely does take quite a while to get up to speed, but I like that I know it, and I certainly prefer it to QWERTY!
I learned dvorak years ago but gave up on it after realizing:
It was certainly fun to learn, though!
I just full on switched and now I can't type normally anymore on qwerty. Like if I have to type on a normal keyboard I just look like I never learnt touch typing :(
I've been using Dvorak on every device possible since 2006.
Upsides:
downsides:
I feel ya. I always have to have my layout and then another normal layout for my current partner