Best tools for learning Arabic touch typing skills

The average person spends at least three hours a day using the keyboard while working, writing emails, writing messages, and also using social networks, etc.

If you increase your typing speed by 20%, you can save up to 35 minutes per day, which equates to 213 hours per year. Thus, if you increase your typing speed, you can save up to 21 days per year. One way to achieve that is touch typing.

Touch typing (German: Zehnfingersystem) is a complex process. The human body has the ability to develop what is called “muscle memory”. When we learn to touch type, we are essentially teaching our hands and brains to coordinate with one another so that we can press the right keys in the right sequence.

An average professional typist usually types around 65 to 75 words per minute (WPM). If you want to enter touch typing competitions, you should achieve at least 150 wpm.

If you spend about 30 minutes a day to train your touch typing skills, you will see your keyboard input speed improve within two weeks.

You can test your speed in English here. For Arabic, click here.

There are many ways to express the term touch-typing in Arabic. They are basically literal translations of the English terms:

• تعلم الكتابة السريعة
• تعليم الكتابة باللمس
• ‏‏تعلم الكتابة بدون النظر إلى لوحة المفاتيح

tybaa.com – learn Arabic typing skills

The Arabic website tybaa.com (موقع أكاديمية الطباعة لتعلم الطباعة باللمس) offers free lessons that teach you how to write in Arabic without looking at the keyboard. Note that the website is only in Arabic.

In sixteen lessons, you will learn which finger you should use to press certain letters. By doing this, you will train your muscle memory.

I can only recommend this website. If you can motivate yourself and do a few workouts each day, you will improve quickly.

Ktouch – if you use Linux

I have been using Arch Linux (KDE) as my operating system for ages. If you use Linux, there is a great KDE app call KTouch which is also available on Flathub.

KTouch is a typewriter trainer for learning to touch type. It provides you with text to train on and adjusts to different levels depending on how good you are. It displays your keyboard and indicates which key to press next and which is the correct finger to use.

KTouch ships with dozens of different courses in many languages – including ARABIC! Arabic keyboard layouts are supported and new user-defined layouts can be created.

Touch typing in Arabic – other websites and operating systems

I couldn’t find many websites or apps (Windows, Mac) offering touch typing lessons for Arabic. Here are some links:

• https://staminaon.com/ar/#basic
• https://www.typingstudy.com/ar-arabic-3/lesson/1
• Microsoft Windows Users can try the freeware Rapidtyping

There is also a Udemy course for beginners. I haven’t tried it, but it got some good reviews:

Do you know other good tools for learning touch-typing in Arabic? Please share in the comments below.

In part one, we looked at who invented the Arabic typewriter.

Who invented the Arabic typewriter (keyboard)?

The Arabic keyboard we use today was invented in 1899 by two men who almost simultaneously worked on an Arabic typewriter: Selim Haddad and Philippe Waked.

• History

byGerald Drißner

4 min

Note: The feature image was generated by AI and is for illustration purposes only. The Arabic script in the image makes no sense – so please don’t try to decipher it ;-)