Why Presspace exists
Almost everyone types every day, and almost nobody practises it on purpose. Most people pick it up by accident, settle somewhere around 40 words a minute, and stay there for years. They could improve. Nothing ever told them what to improve.
Presspace started in Beira, Mozambique, as a personal tool. The typing sites we tried either put a sign-up wall and a stack of pop-ups in front of the test, or they gave a number and stopped. What we wanted was the bit in between: here is your speed, here is the specific reason it is not higher, and here is a drill for that reason.
So every keystroke on Presspace is timed as well as scored. That one decision is what makes the keyboard heatmap worth opening. It can show you the keys you never miss but which cost you 90 milliseconds each, and that is usually where a stuck score is hiding. What began as one person's tool is now a site looked after by a small team, and the idea has not changed.
How the numbers are calculated
Typing sites disagree about scoring more than most people expect, which is why the same typist can get 55 on one site and 68 on another. Here is exactly what we do. Our conventions match 10FastFingers, Typeracer and Monkeytype, so a score here should sit within a point or so of theirs on a similar word list.
| Figure | How we work it out |
|---|---|
| Net WPM | Characters in every correctly typed word, plus one space per word, divided by 5, divided by the test length in minutes. A word with a mistake left in it earns nothing. |
| Raw WPM | Every character keystroke, right or wrong, plus one space per submitted word, over the same span. |
| Accuracy | Correct keystrokes divided by all character keystrokes. |
| Consistency | 100 × (1 − the coefficient of variation of rolling three-second WPM samples). |
The gap between raw and net is the price of your errors. A wide gap means your hands are moving faster than you can control. Timed tests are scored over exactly their length, so sixty seconds is sixty seconds, and the clock starts on the key-down of your first character.
Corrected and uncorrected errors
Results split mistakes in two. Corrected errors are wrong keys you fixed with Backspace before finishing the word. They cost you time and count against accuracy. Uncorrected errors are mismatches still there when you pressed Space. They count against accuracy and they void the word, so they also cost net WPM.
Consistency
This measures how steady your pace was across the run. Typists who hold a rhythm finish a page sooner than typists who sprint and stall, even when their top speeds match. If your consistency is low, slowing your fastest bursts will usually raise your average.
Time cost
In the Stats panel each key gets a time cost: the seconds it adds per hundred keystrokes, combining hesitation above your own baseline with the time spent fixing its mistakes. It is the fairest ranking of what to practise next, because it weighs a rare key you always fumble against a common key you are merely slow on.
Accuracy first
A typist at 45 WPM and 98% accuracy usually improves faster than one at 70 WPM and 80%. Each error costs time to notice, delete and retype, and sloppy practice trains sloppy movement. Hold 97% before you push the pace. Our guide to how WPM is calculated has worked examples.
What is on the site
Every mode is meant to train or measure something specific. If it does neither, we leave it out.
Tests
Timed tests from 15 seconds to 5 minutes, word goals, real quotes, code in six languages, your own pasted text, Zen and Flow for typing without pressure, and a Daily challenge that gives everyone the same words on the same date.
Games
Twenty-five typing games. Some are pure arcade, like Starfall (a 3D space shooter), Nitro (a 3D race) and Key Hero (a rhythm game on a 3D note highway). Others train one skill: Treadmill for holding pace, Tempo for rhythm, Sudden Death for accuracy, Key Reflex for reaction time.
Challenges
Twenty-five twists on a timed test with one rule bent: mirrored text, one hand only, no Backspace, numbers only, words that fade before you reach them, and more.
Practice
Twelve lessons from the home row to full sentences, each with an accuracy pass mark. A shortcut trainer for 82 shortcuts, Dictation, Marathon chapters saved between visits, and drills built from your own weak keys and words.
Around all that sit the parts that make practice pleasant. There are more than 60 themes plus a theme editor for making your own, and 25 keyboard sound packs recorded from real mechanical switches (linear, tactile and clicky). The keyboard heatmap has accuracy, speed and finger views, and clicking any key on it builds a test where every word contains that key. Word lists come in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian.
What we hold to
- Free, with no paid tier. Every test, game, statistic and export is available to everyone. There is nothing hidden behind a wall and no watermark on your results.
- No account needed. You never have to sign up. Signing in is optional and only adds the leaderboards, a public profile with your character, and sync between devices. You can make the profile private, or stay off the public boards, at any time.
- Your results stay in your browser. History, records, achievements, heatmap data and lesson progress are kept in your browser's local storage. We do not receive them. You can export everything as JSON from the Stats panel or clear it in one click. Our privacy policy covers what the analytics and advertising services on the site collect.
- Ads stay out of the way. Advertising pays for hosting. We keep ad units well away from the typing area and the games, they reserve their space so a loading ad cannot shift the page under your hands, and they never cover what you are reading or typing.
- Accessible by default. There is a reduced motion setting (and the site follows your system's preference), two high-contrast themes, the Atkinson Hyperlegible font for the words you type, full keyboard-only use, and results that are announced to screen readers.
How we decide what to build
A new mode has to answer one question: what will a typist get better at by playing it? Treadmill exists because holding pace is a skill. Tempo exists because consistency can be trained directly. Dictation exists because typing what you hear is a different task from copying what you see. When an idea only adds novelty, it waits.
Much of what changes comes from messages. Bug reports get fixed first, then anything that makes a number more honest, then new things. If a word list reads oddly to a native speaker, we treat that as a bug too. Before a release we run automated checks over every mode, the scoring rules and the sound packs, because a typing test that miscounts is worse than no test at all.
How to reach us
Write to presspaceorg@gmail.com or use the contact page. We read everything. Bug reports that mention your browser, your device and what you were doing are the easiest to act on.
Credits
Presspace is built on other people's generous work, and we want to say so plainly.
- Icons
- Lucide, under the ISC licence.
- Keyboard sounds
- Recordings from kbsim by Thomas Lai and Mechvibes by Hai Nguyen, both under the MIT licence. We trimmed and levelled the clips; the recordings are theirs.
- Texts
- The passages in Quote mode and Marathon are in the public domain.
- 3D games
- Built with Three.js, under the MIT licence.
Find out where you stand
Sixty seconds, no sign-up, and a heatmap at the end.