Accessibility and demos
Browser text entry, at a pace you set
Typist puts prepared text into an editable browser field as keyboard input, at a speed you choose. The point is not speed for its own sake — it is that the text goes in without you having to press every key.
Fewer keystrokes
Typing is physical work, and for some people it is the limiting factor in what they can get done in a session at a computer. If the text already exists — drafted elsewhere, dictated, copied from a document, kept as a snippet — then re-entering it by hand means spending effort on the mechanical part rather than the thinking part.
Typist removes that mechanical part. You put the text in the side panel, click the field it should go into, and press Start. The keystrokes happen without you. You still decide what the text says, where it goes, and how quickly it arrives, and you can stop it at any point.
That is the whole of the claim, and it is worth being plain about the shape of it: this is a convenience for entering text you already have. Typist is not assistive technology and it is not a substitute for any. It sits alongside a screen reader, a switch device, dictation software or an on-screen keyboard rather than replacing what those do. If you already use dictation to draft, Typist is one way of moving a finished draft into a web form without retyping it — see retyping a long draft.
Pacing that you control
The speed runs from 20 to 400 words per minute, starting at 60, with presets at 40, 60, 100, 150, 250 and 400. There are two pacing modes: a varied pace that takes a short pause at punctuation, and a fast steady mode about eight times quicker with no pauses.
Slower is not a lesser setting here. A pace you can read along with lets you catch a wrong paragraph before all of it is in the field, and it gives a page that reacts as you write — one that formats, counts characters or saves a draft — room to keep up. Pause, resume and stop are available mid-run, and a progress indicator shows where you are. More on choosing a number.
Demos, recordings and presentations
There is a particular problem with showing software to a room: pasting a block of text into a form is invisible. One frame the field is empty, the next it is full, and everyone watching has missed the part you wanted them to see. Typing it live solves that but costs you attention you would rather spend talking, and typos in front of an audience are their own kind of expensive.
Entering the text at a set pace gets you both. The field fills at a speed the room can follow, the words are the ones you prepared, and your hands are free. For a screen recording the same applies: you can set the pace to suit the narration rather than racing it, and run the take again without retyping a word. We go into the demo case in more detail on auto typer for live demos and presentations, and the accessibility side has its own page on the accessibility typing tool.
Repetitive entry
The other everyday use is text you find yourself entering again and again — a standard description, a block of boilerplate, a set of notes that belongs on every record. Save it once as a snippet and it is in the panel on any device you are signed in on. The free plan holds three snippets and Pro holds unlimited; editing one you already own never counts against the limit.
Worth setting expectations here: one run fills one field, the one you clicked into. Typist does not move between fields, tick boxes, choose from dropdowns or submit anything. For a form with several boxes that means one run per box. Repetitive browser data entry covers how that plays out in practice.
Where it can type
Typist enters text into the editable field you have focused: single-line text boxes, multi-line text areas, rich-text editors inside web apps, and Google Docs documents, which have support written specifically for them. If nothing editable is focused when you press Start, Typist stops and asks you to click into a text field rather than guessing where the text should go. The auto typer page explains the mechanism in full.
What we receive
The text in the panel stays on your device and is sent only to the page you are typing into. The single exception is a snippet you deliberately save, which is stored so it can reach your other signed-in devices. Signing in with Google is required before typing, and the only things we ask Google for are your account identifier and verified email address. The privacy page sets this out line by line.
Free plan: 300 words a day, reset at 00:00 UTC. Pro is $4.99 a month.