Keyflare: Typing Test, Typing Practice and Typing Games

What is Keyflare?

Keyflare is a free typing test and a set of typing games in one page, on any computer, tablet or phone. Take a 15, 30, 60 or 120 second WPM test, or type 10 to 100 words, with plain words, punctuation or numbers. You get your net and raw words per minute, accuracy and consistency, a second-by-second speed graph and a heat map of the keys you missed.

Then make yourself faster. The Practice trainer remembers how quickly and how accurately you hit every key and every letter pair, and builds each short session around your weakest ones. Twenty lessons teach touch typing from the home row up, Meteor Storm turns typing into an arcade shooter, and typing races put you against computer racers, your own ghost or people online. A new daily passage arrives every day for everyone.

How to play Keyflare

1. Pick a test length and just start typing: the clock starts on your first key. Type the words as shown and press Space between them.
2. A wrong letter turns red. Fix it with Backspace, or carry on: mistakes you leave behind cost speed. Ctrl+Backspace (Option+Delete on a Mac) clears a whole word, and Backspace on an empty word takes you back to a word with a mistake.
3. Press Tab at any time for a fresh test. Your result shows net WPM, raw WPM, accuracy and consistency, with a speed graph and a key heat map.
4. In races, a word with a mistake must be fixed before Space moves on, so your ship only moves on correct typing.
5. In Meteor Storm, type the first letter of a falling word to lock on, finish it to blast it, and protect your shields.

Keyflare tips and strategy

• Accuracy first. Typing at 97% accuracy and then speeding up beats fast, sloppy typing every time, because every fixed mistake costs several keystrokes.
• Keep your fingers on the home row (A S D F and J K L ;) and return there after every reach. The bumps on F and J tell you where you are without looking.
• Look at the screen, not your hands. It feels slower for a few days and then much faster.
• Practice little and often: ten focused minutes a day improves your speed more than one long session a week.

How WPM is measured

One word is five characters, spaces included. Raw (gross) WPM counts everything you typed, as it stands at the end, divided by five and by the minutes. Net WPM takes away one word a minute for every uncorrected error: wrong letters left in, extra letters and letters of words you skipped. Accuracy is your correct keystrokes out of all keystrokes, so mistakes you fixed still count against it. Consistency shows how steady your speed was from second to second.

An adaptive typing trainer

Every session teaches Keyflare a little more about your hands. It tracks the time between keys and the miss rate for each letter and letter pair, weights recent sessions most, and gently brings back keys you have not practised for a few days. Each practice round mixes real words that contain your weak spots with everyday words, so it still reads like text. The Progress panel charts your speed and accuracy over the last 30 days.

Typing games: Meteor Storm and races

Meteor Storm has four levels, Easy to Insane, with combos up to four times the points, power-up words that freeze time or clear the sky, and a mothership carrying a whole phrase every fifth wave. Races come with computer racers at Easy, Medium, Hard and Insane speeds, a ghost of your own best race, and live online races for two to five people with a room code or link.

Keyflare FAQ