Modern Dvorak alternatives

Hello there. I am looking for modern alternatives for Dvorak, which I happily used for more than 7 years. My speed is about 50 WPM (more than enough for me). At the moment I use Dygma Defy, previously UHK v2

Why did I choose Dvorak?

When I had a right wrist pain while touch typing with QWERTY. I couldn't afford an ergonomic keyboard (I had a cheap and it is supported by Windows out of the box. Since I didn't experience any pain in my right wrist, even with a terrible setup (laptop in a coffeehouse)

What I like in Dvorak (personal opinion)

  1. Pain free on any keyboard
  2. Typing rhythm
  3. Punctuation placement (especially - key)
  4. Easy to use with any operating system
  5. Works pretty well with both staggered and ortholinear keyboards

Why switching?

  1. C, V, D, Z placed on the right side. It's not a big deal for touch typing, however, it's a pain when I need to use mouse and switch between different programs quickly (e.g. Slack, Unreal Editor, IDE). And I don't want to bloat my setup by adding new layers or macros
  2. Right pinky overload. As I stated before, I don't have any pain while typing on Dvorak. But I feel awkward while using it, especially in slow situations
  3. [] weird position (can be fixed by layers)
  4. Weird position of the L key and C, R, L in general feels a bit clunky
  5. Weird position of I letter. Not a big deal for me, but still

What I tried?

I like to follow KISS principal, and decided to choose another well known layout Colemak DH. I didn't want to dive to deep into the world of alternative layouts, I just want to fix the problems, not read a scientific paper.

I spent about 2 weeks learning it, but as soon as I started reaching 25+ speed and confidently use for work, the same right wrist pain which I had with QWERTY appeared. Even though I use an ortholinear split and haven't experienced any issues using Dvorak with the same setup.

Thus I learned, that I can't use anything similar to Colemak and roll-centered layouts because of my hand specifics. At the moment I'm rolling back to Dvorak, but I still want to find a better solution for me.

What do I want from the alternative layout?

  1. Fix my issues with Dvorak
  2. High alteration rate to avoid pain in the right wrist
  3. Less rolls (means, no Colemak, Hands Down, etc.)
  4. Preferably, can work well on both ortholinear and staggered keyboards at the same time
  5. Good typing rhythm
  6. No thumb cluster letters

My candidates

I found several links, which helped me a bit to create a small list of candidates.

  1. Link 1
  2. Link 2
  3. Link 3

Here are my candidates:

  • Gallium
  • Graphyte
  • Pine v4

Please, keep in mind that I'm a newbie, I have very little knowledge abotut keyboard analyzys and optimization. To be honest, I'm not even interested to dive too deep into this, I just want to have a good tool to work on.

Posted Dec 6, 2025, 5:02 PM UTC

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