Make use of both thumbs.

At first glance of the UHK, the layout may seem relatively standard - but we’ve packed in a lot of special features that really make a huge difference in productivity. Read more about it below!

Did you know that touch typists using regular keyboards all around the world only use 9 of their 10 fingers? That’s because we are heavily conditioned to use either our left or right thumb to press the space bar, leaving the other thumb unutilized.

The UHK Space layout (the Space and Mod keys are swappable/remappable)

The thumb being our strongest digit, a traditional wide Space bar is just a huge waste. But with a split Space bar, we can put our second thumb to use for anything we want - like switching layers. In the UHK factory settings, the Mod layer is right at your second thumb.

How does the Mod layer make your life easier? Apart from housing navigation keys, it give you easy access to convenience shortcuts!

Chances are that you use Alt+Tab hundreds if not thousands of times on a daily basis to switch windows. You may not notice it, but this shortcut is slowly stealing your time. People typically bend their thumb beneath their palm to reach Alt and also leave the home row! What if there was a better way?

On our factory keymap, Mod+D invokes Alt+Tab. No awkward thumb bending, no leaving the home row. Even better, just as when you hold down Alt and press Tab many times in sequence to switch to the next window, you can keep Mod pressed and press D many times in sequence to do the same. You can also compose with Shift to switch backwards. But this is just the tip of the iceberg! Let’s see the other convenience shortcuts, too:

• Mod + D → Next window ( Alt + Tab )
• Mod + W → Previous tab ( Ctrl + PgDn )
• Mod + R → Next tab ( Ctrl + PgUp )
• Mod + E → New tab ( Ctrl + T )
• Mod + C → Close tab ( Ctrl + W )
• Mod + S → Previous workspace ( Ctrl + Alt + ← )
• Mod + F → Next workspace ( Ctrl + Alt + → )

Don’t like all of these shortcuts? Feel free to remap it! Also, for those of you using a Mac, we’ll have a Mac-specific preset layout with shortcuts using the Cmd key.

And that’s it for today, ladies and gents - have a great day!

If you haven’t pledged yet, we still have some UHKs available at the Early Bird price - so now’s the time to order your keyboard!

*Current event: The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard will be demoed tomorrow (Oct 28, 2015) at the Hackware v1.2 in Singapore. Join the event to see it in action!*

If you have any questions, please ask us!

We will keep you posted about twice a week with demos, tear-downs, statistics, and other interesting material, so stay tuned!

Laci, lead developer of the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard