One-handed typing, faster and easier.
Typeahead makes typing with one hand faster and easier. It suggests the rest of your sentence at your cursor, one key puts it in, and every key it uses is a single press you can move.
A picture of Messages on a Mac. Aoife asks: “Coffee on Thursday? Café Mirabelle opens at ten.” In the reply field, “Thursday works for me. See you” is typed, and Typeahead’s grey suggestion after the cursor reads “at Café Mirabelle at ten.” One press of Tab would put it in.
No shortcut needs two hands.
Tab, the right arrow and Esc are single keys with no modifier, so taking a suggestion is one press.
A picture of Typeahead’s Shortcuts settings: Accept Suggestion is Tab, Accept Next Word is the right arrow, and Dismiss Suggestion is Esc. Each is a single key.
Put the key where your hand is.
In Settings › Shortcuts, each key is yours to change.
Any key you like. Move Accept, Next Word or Dismiss to a key you reach easily.
Clear what you don’t use. Set any of the three to None.
Its own keys per app. Give one app different keys from the rest.
Hold to keep going. Hold Tab or the right arrow and the words keep coming.
A phrase per press.
Set Length from a word or two up to 16 words, so one press can stand in for a whole sentence.
A picture of the four Length settings for “See you”: Short suggests “soon.”, Medium “on Friday, then.”, Long “on Friday at the café, around noon.”, and Very Long adds “I’ll bring the photos from our trip to Lisbon.”
Your names and lines, learned.
Write a line a few times and two words bring it back. Names you use come back spelled your way.
A picture of three words, each half typed and finished by a suggestion: Siobhán, Okonkwo and Kubernetes.
One-handed keyboards, in detail.
One-handed keyboards and layouts
A one-handed keyboard is hardware: a smaller board, or one laid out for a single hand. macOS also has one-handed input sources, the Dvorak Left and Right layouts. Typeahead is neither. It’s software that suggests the rest of your sentence, so there’s less to type.
What we haven’t tested yet
We haven’t tested Typeahead with one-handed keyboards, the Dvorak Left and Right layouts, Sticky Keys or Slow Keys yet. Tell us what you use, and if you rely on one of them.
Typing with Typeahead, one hand at a time
Type the start of a sentence. When the grey suggestion is right, press Tab; when only the next word is, press the right arrow. Each suggestion you accept means fewer keystrokes, and Settings › Insights counts how many you’ve saved. More on the keys for suggestions and pausing Typeahead.
Where it works
In Mac apps with a standard text field, like Apple Mail, Gmail, Slack, Messages and Apple Notes. See the Mac apps Typeahead supports, how Typeahead works and typing help on your Mac.
Private, with no account
Typeahead never sends your writing to a server. What it learns stays on your Mac, it works offline after setup, and a license key turns it on, with no account to make.
Common questions
Use the keyboard that suits you, and let Typeahead make it faster and easier. Typeahead shows the rest of your sentence in grey at your cursor, and one press of Tab puts it in, so each suggestion you accept means fewer keystrokes. Every key it uses is a single press, and you can move each one to a key your hand reaches easily.
Yes. In Settings › Shortcuts you can set Accept Suggestion to any key, or give one app its own. The right arrow takes one word at a time and Esc clears the suggestion, and you can change or clear those keys too.
We haven't tested Typeahead with one-handed keyboards, or with the Dvorak Left and Right layouts in macOS, yet. Tell us what you use.
It can. Set Length to Very Long and a suggestion can run to 16 words; Short, Medium and Long stop at 2, 4 and 8. Hold Tab and the words keep coming.
Yes. Typeahead works in Gmail, Slack, Apple Mail, Messages and other Mac apps with a standard text field. The compatibility page lists every app we've tested.
No. A license key turns Typeahead on, and there's no account to make.
Typing with one hand? Let’s talk.
Typeahead can make typing with one hand faster and easier. Tell us how you type, and we’ll help you set it up to suit your hand.
