{"id":173,"date":"2026-10-30T19:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T19:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/?p=173"},"modified":"2026-10-30T19:53:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T19:53:58","slug":"fatf8nger-a-keyboard-for-people-with-fat-fingers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/30\/fatf8nger-a-keyboard-for-people-with-fat-fingers\/","title":{"rendered":"FatF8nger \u2014 A Keyboard for People With Fat Fingers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Typing with my nose<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of command entry;on my phone lately, and I&#8217;ve come to the conclusion that whoever designed these little smartphone keyboards must have fingers the size of toothpicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m trying to type commads, not win a game of Operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I came up with <strong>FatF8nger<\/strong>, an Android keyboard with slightly bigger buttons, a proper PC-style layout, and some features that actually make sense when you&#8217;re writing code on a phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s inspired by the old Hacker&#8217;s Keyboard. There&#8217;s a permanent number row, arrow keys, Tab, Esc, Ctrl, Alt, and the other things programmers need without digging through three screens of smiley faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But my favorite feature is something I call <strong>Clipboard Purgatory<\/strong>. Instead of copying something, switching apps, copying something else, and losing the first thing, FatF8nger gives me eight paste positions to work with. I can keep snippets of code, commands, addresses, or whatever else I&#8217;m juggling without constantly going back to retrieve them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then there&#8217;s my typing. Apparently, my fingers think the number 8 is the letter I, 3 is E, and 6 is Y. FatF8nger knows about a handful of these mistakes and quietly fixes them when appropriate. It&#8217;s not trying to rewrite my sentences or predict what I&#8217;m thinking. And it had better leave my IP addresses, passwords, and code alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"473\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1000025612-473x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1000025612-473x1024.jpg 473w, https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1000025612-138x300.jpg 138w, https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1000025612-709x1536.jpg 709w, https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1000025612-768x1664.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1000025612-945x2048.jpg 945w, https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1000025612.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 473px) 100vw, 473px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No AI, no cloud processing, no keyboard sending everything I type off to somebody&#8217;s server. Just a native Kotlin keyboard doing its job locally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t need a keyboard that writes poetry, generates emojis, or finishes my thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I need one that lets me type <code>sudo systemctl restart apache2<\/code> without having to correct it six times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>FatF8nger isn&#8217;t trying to correct my spelling. It&#8217;s correcting my fingers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yes, I deliberately put an 8 in the name. Seemed appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Typing with my nose I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of command entry;on my phone lately, and I&#8217;ve come to the conclusion that whoever designed these little smartphone keyboards must have fingers the size of toothpicks. I&#8217;m trying to type commads, not win a game of Operation. So I came up with FatF8nger, an Android keyboard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glencoulson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}