Accessibility
An accessibility typing tool for Chrome
If getting a long piece of text into a browser field means a long stretch of continuous keystrokes, Typist can carry that part. You prepare the text once, focus the field, and press Start.
What this actually does for you
The job Typist takes off your hands is narrow and worth being precise about: turning text that already exists into keystrokes in a field, without you making each of those keystrokes. A 300-word paragraph is 300 words you do not type character by character. You still decide what the text says, where it goes, and when it starts.
For people managing repetitive strain, limited hand mobility, tremor or fatigue, the useful part is usually the sustained bit. Two or three keystrokes are rarely the problem. Two thousand in a row often are. Typist lets you spend keystrokes on the short things and hand over the long ones.
Being straight about this
Typist is a convenience, not assistive technology and not a medical device. We make no health claims and promise no outcome for any condition. If keyboard use is causing you pain, that is a conversation for a clinician, not a browser extension.
It works alongside your other tools, not instead of them
Typist does not compete with dictation, switch access, on-screen keyboards or a screen reader. It does one small thing none of those do well, and fits around them.
A common pairing is dictation plus Typist. Dictation is good at getting words out of your head and onto a page, but it can be awkward in a cramped web field where every misheard word means a correction. So dictate into a comfortable editor, get the text right there, then paste it into the Typist panel and let it go into the web field as keystrokes.
If you use a screen reader or switch access, nothing about Typist replaces it. The panel is one more thing on the screen you will navigate with the tools you already have.
What the panel asks of you
The gap between "types for you" and "does everything for you" is where disappointment lives, so: every run needs four things from you.
- Text in the panel. Paste it, type it, or load a saved snippet. A paste button makes that a single click.
- A focused field. You have to click or tab into the field on the page where the text should land. Typist does not choose a field for you, and it will not start if what is focused is not an editable field.
- A press of Start. Nothing runs on any page until you do.
- A Google sign-in, once. Required before typing; the only scopes requested are openid and email.
Pace it to suit you
Speed runs from 20 to 400 words per minute, with presets at 40, 60, 100, 150, 250 and 400 and a default of 60. Slower is not only for demos: a slower run gives you time to read what is arriving and to catch a mistake in the source text before the whole paragraph is in. There are two pacing modes, one with short pauses at punctuation and a fast steady mode roughly eight times quicker with no pauses. The typing speed control page goes through when each is the better choice.
You can pause a run and resume it from the same character, or stop it outright, and a progress indicator shows how far through you are. If you need to step away mid-paragraph, the run waits.
The panel's own controls
The side panel is built from ordinary form controls and buttons, so it takes keyboard focus and behaves the way the browser's own widgets do. The speed slider is a labelled range input you can adjust with the arrow keys, the text box has a label for screen readers, and status messages — including the daily allowance line — are announced politely rather than grabbing focus from whatever you are doing.
Saved snippets save the setup, too
If the same text goes in repeatedly — a standard reply, an address block — save it as a snippet: a titled block kept on your account and synced to your other signed-in devices. Free accounts keep three; Pro keeps as many as you like, and editing one you already own never counts against the limit. See saved typing snippets, or typing long text without manual typing for the longer-form case.
Free plan: 300 words a day, reset at 00:00 UTC.
- Which fields does it work in?
- Editable browser fields: text boxes, text areas, rich-text editors, and Google Docs documents, which the extension supports directly. Anything else is refused with a message asking you to click into a text field. More in browser text entry.
- Does my text go to a server?
- No. The text in the panel stays on your device and is sent only to the page you are typing into. The one exception is a snippet you deliberately save, which is stored so it can sync. The privacy page has the full account.
- Can it fill in a whole form for me?
- No. Typist types into one field at a time — the one you focused — and does not click, navigate, or submit anything.
The auto typer for Chrome page covers the product as a whole.