Guide

How to type text automatically in a browser

Seven steps, start to finish, and an honest account of which browser fields accept typed entry and which will not.

The short version: put the text in the side panel, click the field you want it to go into, choose a speed, press Start. The longer version is below, because the two steps people get wrong are choosing the field and choosing the speed.

Step by step

1. Add Typist to Chrome. It runs as a side panel, so it sits beside the page rather than covering it. The Chrome Web Store listing is not published yet.
2. Sign in with Google. This is required before the first run. Typist asks Google for two things only: the identifier for your account and your verified email address. Nothing else from your Google profile reaches us, and no other Google service is touched. The privacy page has the detail.
3. Put your text in the panel. Type it, paste it, or load one of your saved snippets. A snippet is a titled block of text stored on your account and available on your other signed-in devices — useful for anything you enter more than once. See saved typing snippets.
4. Click into the destination field. This is the step that matters most. Typist types into the one field you have focused, so click directly into it before you start. If nothing editable is focused, Typist will not guess — it stops and asks you to click into a text field.
5. Set the speed. The slider runs from 20 to 400 words per minute and starts at 60. There are presets at 40, 60, 100, 150, 250 and 400. Pick the pacing mode too: a varied pace that takes a short pause at punctuation, or a fast steady mode about eight times quicker with no pauses.
6. Press Start. The text goes in character by character at the pace you chose, and a progress indicator shows how far along the run is.
7. Pause, resume or stop whenever you want. Pause holds the run where it is and picks it up again from the same point. Stop ends it.

Which fields accept typed entry

Typist enters text as keyboard input into an editable field, which means it works where the browser genuinely has something editable focused. In practice that is four kinds of place:

• Single-line text boxes. Form fields, search boxes, short answer inputs.
• Text areas. The larger multi-line boxes used for messages, notes and long-form writing.
• Rich-text editors. Editable regions inside web apps — comment boxes, chat composers, note-taking surfaces.
• Google Docs. Docs builds its editing surface differently from an ordinary text box, so Typist has support written specifically for it. Here is how that works.

And which will not

Anything that is not one of the above is refused, with a message asking you to click into a text field. That covers a lot of ground, and it is better to know it up front than to find out mid-run:

• Nothing focused. If you clicked the page background, or the panel took focus away from the field, Typist has no target and will say so. Click back into the field.
• Fields a page protects. Some sites guard their inputs in ways Typist makes no attempt to work around. We make no claim about verification fields, hidden fields, or inputs behind submit protection.
• Anything that needs more than typing. Typist types. It does not click buttons, tick boxes, choose from dropdowns, submit a form, follow a link, or move to the next field. If your task needs those, you want browser automation instead — the difference is worth reading.
• More than one field at a time. One run fills one field. For a form with several boxes, that means one run each, clicking into each field in turn.

Choosing a pace that suits the task

The default of 60 words per minute is deliberately unhurried; it is a speed you can read along with. For a demo in front of an audience, slower is usually better — around 40 gives people time to follow what is appearing on screen. For a long piece of text you are not watching, the fast steady mode gets it done and is the reason the upper presets exist.

If the destination is a web app that does work while you write, such as formatting as it goes or counting characters, a lower speed gives it room to keep up. There is more on picking a number in typing speed control, and a fuller description of the mechanism on the auto typer page.

Add Typist to Chrome

Free plan: 300 words a day. A Google sign-in is required before typing.