Type to fly
This is a typing arcade run built on a touch-typing curriculum. Your typing speed is your travel speed, the distance you cover is the score, every word you clear is cut in half, and a ghost of your own best run is the only thing you race. One wrong key costs you speed and everything you have not banked.
First time here
Type something. We will tell you how fast you are.
Common three to five letter words, thirty seconds or so, no account needed and nothing to dismiss. You do not need to know where the keys are — hunt for them. The point is to get a real number out of you before anybody asks you to learn anything.
Every letter moves you forward and a wrong one slows you down. That is the whole game.
Know the keys already? Go straight to the ladder.
Unit 1 of 15
You know where they are.
Now the keyboard fades and the only thing moving you forward is how fast you type.
One wrong key and you lose the multiplier, and anything you have not banked. Tab banks it.
Reach 1.80 km
The run is the lesson path, moving
The keys in the run are not a themed selection. They are exactly the keys the lesson path has
unlocked, in the order the KTouch and GNU Typist English progression introduces them: two keys
at a time, as reaches from a home finger, starting with the two index fingers on j
and f because those are the only keys with tactile bumps. The rows are interleaved
rather than completed, which is how touch typing is actually taught and is not what most
software does.
That order is why the run starts where it does. Unit one is two letters, and a two-letter
alphabet is cleared by mashing without reading a thing. By unit four the path has added
k, d, l, s and then c and
a, and at that point real words appear: call, class,
salad, flask. A word you can read is a word worth clearing, so that
is the first point on the path where an arcade run makes any sense at all.
What the run measures
Speed is not a number you are shown. It is the starfield: the faster you type accurately, the faster it moves, and it bleeds away in proportion to itself the moment you stop, so the pace settles wherever your real keystroke rate holds it rather than pinning at a ceiling. Distance is the integral of that, and distance is the score. Pass the target and the level clears, but the run does not end, because ending it at the target would turn an endless run into a stopwatch and delete the reason to beat your own best.
A wrong key costs speed and wipes the pot, and that is the only place the difficulty preset applies. Gentle, Standard and Brisk change what a mistake and a pause cost, and nothing else. A flawless run clears in the same time on all three, which is deliberate: a preset that touched a correct keystroke would be changing the price of the level rather than the price of an error.
There are two ways to arrive at a run. If you have never been here before, the page opens with a free run on common short words rather than on lesson one, because lesson one is two keys and a two-key drill cannot tell you anything about how fast you type. Everyone else lands on the next level of the path, or on whichever level they followed a link to. Either way nothing appears in front of the page, nothing has to be dismissed, and this is the only page on the site where a run exists at all.
No-timer mode sits beside those presets and is not one of them. With it on, nothing ends the run when you stop, and the distance counts how much you have typed rather than how fast, so a level clears at any pace. That is the accessibility answer rather than a fourth difficulty: the three presets scale what a mistake costs, and a game whose only concession to a player who cannot supply speed is a gentler penalty has not actually made one. Runs made without the timer are stored apart and are never raced against timed runs, because a distance that counts keystrokes and a distance that measures pace are not the same measurement.
Every keystroke goes to the same place
The run writes to the same per-key record the ordinary drills build. Accuracy and timing for each letter fold into one model, so a letter you keep missing in the run is a letter the next drill weights toward, and the report at the end shows the three that cost you most alongside what they cost you last time. It is stored in your browser and nowhere else.
If you have not learned the key positions yet, the run is the wrong place to start. Work through the step-by-step guide to learning touch typing first, or use the drills on the home page, and come back once your hands stop hunting. If you write code, the three symbol tracks are Python, C++ and HTML.
The ladder is computed, not written
There is no list of levels anywhere in this site. The ladder is generated from the curriculum every time the site is built: each unit gets placement levels derived from how many new keys it introduces, practice levels derived from how much new vocabulary it unlocks, and exactly one test level. That is why the first unit is short and the capitals unit is not. Two earlier drafts of this used a fixed number of levels per lesson, and both produced the same problem — nine repetitive levels on a two-letter alphabet at the very top of the funnel. The whole ladder is on one page, with every chapter and where you are in it.
Progress is stored in your browser under one versioned key, and once a unit is unlocked it stays unlocked. That second part is deliberate: the per-key record fades over time so that a letter you have not touched in a fortnight comes back into your drills, and if that same fading also controlled the gate, a week away from the site would silently take a unit back off you. Fading decides what you practise. It never decides what you are allowed to reach.
What is here, and what is not
What is here is the ladder, the run, the placement levels and a per-level record of your best distance. What is not here is any kind of ranking against other people: nothing you do is compared with anybody else. Progress stays in your browser and is uploaded nowhere unless you sign in, and clearing site data clears it with it. To carry it to a second machine, sign in on the settings page and it syncs between your devices.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from a typing test?
A test gives you a fixed passage and a stopwatch, and reports a number at the end. This run gives you a distance that only grows while you are typing accurately, and it ends when you stop moving. The practical difference is where your attention goes: a test rewards finishing, and a run rewards not stalling, which is much closer to the thing touch typing actually is once you have learned it.
How many levels are there, and where do they come from?
Sixty-two on the prose ladder and nine on the code ladder, and not one of them is hand-written. The count for each unit is computed from how much new vocabulary that unit unlocks, so the first unit — two keys and a thirty-token list — gets fewer levels than the capitals unit, which unlocks twenty-six letters through shift. Each unit opens with placement levels that have no clock and no score, then run levels, then exactly one test level on a fixed drill so your speed on it is comparable session to session.
How is a level cleared?
By reaching a target distance. The target is a time made concrete: it is how far a reference typist gets in forty-five seconds against that unit's own word list, or seventy-five seconds on a unit test. Nobody can hold "2.5 km" in their head, but "about forty-five seconds" is a session length you can decide to afford. Passing the target does not end the run — the level clears and you keep going, because distance is the score and your own best run is the thing you are chasing.
What does the keyboard at the bottom of the screen do?
It is a hint, and it fades. Each key is drawn in its real position on a real keyboard layout, the next key you need is lit, and every key dims as you hit it correctly during the run. The point is that the aid removes itself as it stops being needed. A hint drawn in the wrong position would be worse than no hint at all, because it teaches a false map of the board.
What is banking, and why is it on Tab?
Every correct character raises a multiplier and adds to a pot that a single wrong key wipes. Tab pays the pot out and resets the multiplier, so you are always choosing between pushing for more and taking what you have. It is on Tab and never on Space because the lesson drills type spaces constantly, so the reflex the site teaches would have banked at every word boundary and the choice would never have been yours.
Does a run change my lesson progress?
Yes, and that is the point of running it here rather than somewhere else. Every keystroke folds into the same per-key record the trainer builds, so a letter you keep missing in the run is a letter the next drill leans on. The record lives in your browser. Clearing site data clears it, and nothing is uploaded unless you sign in, which syncs it between your devices.
I have never done a typing course. What happens if I just open this?
You get a run, straight away, on common three to five letter words, and about thirty seconds later you get a words-per-minute number that is genuinely yours. No account needed to play, nothing to dismiss, and nothing is saved except the record of which keys you missed, in your own browser. That free run deliberately does not start you on the first lesson: lesson one is two keys, and alternating between two home-row keys produces the fastest sequences in typing, so the speed it would report is both flattering and unrepeatable. After the run the lesson path is offered, and the first drills are already weighted toward the letters that just cost you.
I cannot type fast, or I cannot type under time pressure. Is there a mode for that?
Yes, and it is not a difficulty setting. Turn on no-timer mode next to the difficulty presets and two things change: nothing ends the run when you pause, and the distance stops depending on how quickly you type. It becomes a count of how much you type, so a level clears at any pace at all. It is kept separate from the three presets on purpose, because it removes the clock rather than making it slower, and runs made in it are never compared or raced against runs made with the timer on.
Does it work on a phone?
It runs, and the on-screen keyboard opens when you start a run, but it is not the point. Touch typing is a physical skill that needs a real keyboard under both hands, and an on-screen keyboard trains thumbs instead of fingers, so the speed you get on a phone is not a number worth writing down. If you are on a phone now, the written guide is the useful half of the site; come back to the run when you are at a machine with keys.