Long drafts
Retype a long draft without manual typing
You already have the text. It is sitting in one window and it needs to be in another. Typing it out again is an hour of keystrokes that produce nothing new.
The problem is the keystrokes, not the writing
Retyping is a peculiar kind of work. It demands your full attention — a wandering mind puts a word in the wrong place — while producing nothing you did not already have. Two thousand words is a solid half hour of it, and at the end the document says what the source said.
Where the draft came from does not change that. It might be your own notes, a document you wrote in a desktop editor, or something a colleague sent you. Either way the only thing between the two windows is a few thousand keypresses.
What paced entry does about it
Typist is a Chrome side panel. Put the text into the panel, click the field on the page where it should go, set a speed in words per minute, press Start. From there the extension makes the keystrokes instead of you — one character at a time, into the field you chose, at the pace you asked for. A progress indicator shows how far through the run is, and you can pause, resume or stop it.
That is the whole mechanism. Typist types into exactly one field, the one you have focused, and does not click, follow links, or switch tabs. If you want a tool that drives a whole workflow, this is not it — browser automation versus an auto typer draws the line.
Where it can type
Editable browser fields: ordinary text boxes, text areas, rich-text editors built on editable page elements, and Google Docs documents, which have dedicated support in the extension. Click somewhere it cannot work with and it asks you to click into a text field instead. The auto typer overview has the full list; typing into Google Docs covers the Docs case, since a Doc is not an ordinary text box.
How long a draft takes
The range is 20 to 400 words per minute, with presets at 40, 60, 100, 150, 250 and 400, and 60 as the default. Here is what that implies for a few draft lengths.
| Draft | 60 wpm | 100 wpm | 400 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 words | 8 min | 5 min | 1 min 15 s |
| 1,000 words | 17 min | 10 min | 2.5 min |
| 2,500 words | 42 min | 25 min | 6 min 15 s |
| 5,000 words | 83 min | 50 min | 13 min |
Two pacing modes decide the feel. The varied pace inserts short pauses at punctuation, which makes a run easier to follow if you are watching or recording it. The fast steady mode has no pauses and runs roughly eight times quicker, which is what you want when the point is simply to get the draft in. Typing speed control goes further.
The daily allowance, which matters here
Read this before starting something long
The free plan covers 300 words a day, resetting at 00:00 UTC. Words are counted against the day the moment you press Start, and a run you stop early still spends what it reserved — starting a 2,000-word draft and stopping does not refund the words. Pro is $4.99 a month with no daily limit, cancellable at any time, and runs to the end of the period you paid for.
Full terms on the pricing page.
Drafts you enter more than once
If the same block goes in repeatedly — a standing description, a template, a section you reuse — save it as a snippet: a titled block stored on your account and synced to your other signed-in devices. Free accounts keep three, Pro as many as you like, and editing one you own never counts against the limit. More on snippets.
Free plan: 300 words a day. A Google sign-in is required before typing.
Questions
- Can I stop halfway through?
- Yes. Pause, resume and stop all work mid-run, and the progress indicator tells you where you are. On the free plan the reserved words are already counted, so stopping saves time but not allowance.
- Can I split a long draft into several runs?
- Yes, and past a few hundred words it is usually easier — paste a section, run it, add whatever formatting belongs between sections, then do the next one. Entering a longer piece into Docs works through that approach.
- Is my draft sent to a server?
- No. The text in the panel stays on your device and goes only to the page being typed into. The one exception is a snippet you deliberately save, which is stored so it can sync. See the privacy page.
- Do I have to sign in?
- Yes, with Google, before any typing happens. The permissions requested are your account identifier and your email address, and nothing else.
- Why not just paste?
- Often you should. Typist is for the cases where you want the text to arrive progressively instead of all at once — so you can watch it land and stop partway if something is wrong.
If retyping is a recurring part of your week rather than a one-off, see stop retyping long text.