CharaChorder X¶

I own multiple CharaChorder X devices since I backed the project on Kickstarter. The concept appealed to me greatly. Unfortunately there were some early bugs in its interaction with the QMK firmware that powers the ZSA Moonlander. These were resolved over time and I am integrating the small gadget more and more into my workflows.

Adding new chords and shortcuts is particularly pleasant and lets you incorporate your needs into the software quickly. The resulting workflow resembles machine stenography, where shortcuts produce entire words. With CharaChorder you build your own shortcuts and tailor your vocabulary entirely to your own needs.

Because of this, the vocabulary is naturally much smaller than a full stenography system, which is itself mainly limited to the Anglo-American world. Efforts to adapt the same approach to German do exist but are far less advanced. After several weeks of trying to get used to stenography, I cannot recommend that route.

The CharaChorder hardware is therefore a solid alternative, even for other language environments. Even complex words or special key inputs like umlauts and the Windows key work fine, since the hardware emulates a keyboard and sends the stored keystrokes when it receives the configured shortcut. Otherwise the hardware simply passes keystrokes through without modifying them.