Enthium is a highly performant adaptation of the Engrammer and Hands Down
Promethium keyboard layouts. It restores familiarity with Arno's Engram 2.0
layout (YOU on the left hand) and the Dvorak layout (HTNS on the right hand)
while optimizing punctuation placement for programming in the spirit of Engrammer,
featuring HJKL and ,; for Vim, -= for zooming, and ./ for filesystem paths.
q y o u = x l d w z
b c i a e - k h t n s f
' , . ; / j m g p v
r
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Same-finger bigrams (SFBs) such as UE (0.08%), WN (0.06%), and OA (0.05%) can be raked down vertically, reducing their impact on typing flow and performance.
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Pinky load is distributed by frequency: heavy letters B (1.44%) and F (2.14%) are close at hand on the home row's lateral pinky keys (CapsLock, Apostrophe); medium letters
'(0.47%) and V (1.09%) are on the lower row pinky keys; and light letters Q (0.10%) and Z (0.09%) are on the upper row, which all together help reduce strain for short pinky fingers or those weakened by convention. -
Apostrophe is away (on a different finger entirely) from YOU and I so that it can be typed without same-finger bigrams like You'd, I'd, He'd, They'd.
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Minus and equals are clustered for intuitive zooming in/out with Ctrl.
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Comma, period, and slash are arranged relatively to QWERTY for ease of adaptation, especially for navigation and custom application shortcuts.
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Comma and semicolon are associated for cycling f/F/t/T searches in Vim.
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Period and slash are associated for
./../relative filesystem paths and easy access to forward slash and question mark for Vim text search. -
Apostrophe, comma, and period appear in the same sequence as in Dvorak.
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See my blog post for a closer look at Enthium's design and evolution.
The keyboard layout community commonly recommends Pascal Getreuer's guide and ranking tables as a starting point for layout exploration, and Enthium ranks among the top-performing layouts there as of 2025-09-13.
Comparing with conventional layout rankings:
- 0.07% LSBs — first 🥇 place; beats the entire table!
- 0.54% SFBs — second 🥈 place; only surpassed by Focal
- 1.49% redirects — first 🥇 place; beats the entire table!
- 0.16% scissors — fifth place; after Dvorak, APTv3, MTGAP, Colemak-DH
- 45.87% rolls — beats Semimak, Gallium, Engram, HandsDownNeu, Halmak, Dvorak
- 3.22% pinky off — beats APTv3, Semimak, MTGAP, Dvorak, Recurva, Halmak, Engram
Comparing with thumb-letter layout rankings:
- 0.07% LSBs — second 🥈 place; only surpassed by Caster
- 0.54% SFBs — second 🥈 place; only surpassed by Night
- 1.49% redirects — third 🥉 place; after Nordrassil, Vibranium
- 0.16% scissors — fourth place; after RSTHD, Promethium, Maltron
- 45.87% rolls — fifth place; beats Night, Promethium, Nordrassil
- 3.22% pinky off — fourth place; after RSTHD, Nordrassil, Night
Some SFBs in Enthium can be raked vertically across adjacent rows, allowing the same finger to slide over both keys in a single motion:
- 0.54% total SFBs - 0.29% rakeable SFBs = 0.25% effective SFBs
ue(0.08%)wn(0.06%)oa(0.05%)yi(0.03%)a.(0.02%)lk(0.02%)e;(0.01%)np(0.01%)hm(0.01%)
These results were computed with Cyanophage's Layout Analyzer as follows.
| Category | Statistic | Enthium | Promethium | Engrammer | Dvorak | Colemak-DH | QWERTY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summary | Total Word Effort | 736.7 | 732.1 | 899.5 | 1185.5 | 1047.9 | 2070.6 |
| Summary | Effort | 420.83 | 398.09 | 457.41 | 769.69 | 534.99 | 1258.15 |
| Bigrams | Same Finger Bigrams | 0.54% | 0.58% | 0.99% | 1.87% | 0.91% | 4.38% |
| Bigrams | Skip Bigrams (2u) | 0.35% | 0.36% | 0.39% | 0.45% | 0.49% | 1.43% |
| Bigrams | Lat Stretch Bigrams | 0.07% | 0.24% | 0.41% | 0.80% | 1.27% | 4.55% |
| Bigrams | Scissors | 0.16% | 0.11% | 0.36% | 0.08% | 0.15% | 1.46% |
| Trigrams | Alt | 38.04% | 36.98% | 35.62% | 39.08% | 25.43% | 21.38% |
| Trigrams | Alt SFS | 4.51% | 5.27% | 5.93% | 5.85% | 5.47% | 5.42% |
| Trigrams | Roll in | 1.54% | 1.72% | 1.82% | 0.28% | 1.50% | 1.32% |
| Trigrams | Roll out | 0.40% | 0.29% | 0.29% | 0.27% | 0.98% | 1.48% |
| Trigrams | Bigram roll in | 26.85% | 29.17% | 28.14% | 23.51% | 25.18% | 20.38% |
| Trigrams | Bigram roll out | 17.08% | 14.56% | 14.03% | 15.14% | 21.54% | 17.58% |
| Trigrams | Redirect | 1.49% | 1.53% | 2.26% | 1.55% | 5.33% | 6.22% |
| Trigrams | Weak redirect | 0.80% | 0.87% | 0.74% | 0.64% | 1.09% | 0.44% |
| Trigrams | Other | 9.30% | 9.61% | 11.17% | 13.68% | 13.49% | 25.78% |
| Computed | Pinky off | 3.22% | 4.08% | 5.70% | 4.13% | 0.78% | 2.47% |
Legend: QWERTY=white, Engram=yellow, Promethium=green, Enthium=blue, Quirks=pink.
Install:
cd linux/
sudo make install
echo Now restart your graphical session.
Activate:
setxkbmap -layout us -variant enthium # one layout; no switch
setxkbmap -layout us,us -variant enthium,basic # dual layout switching
Repair (e.g. whenever a system-wide XKB package upgrade reverts installation):
cd linux/
sudo make reinstall
echo Now restart your graphical session.
Uninstall:
cd linux/
sudo make uninstall
echo Now restart your graphical session.
Install:
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You'll need Karabiner-Elements, which is also available in Homebrew:
brew install --cask karabiner-elements
Activate:
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Use the complex modification feature for Enthium to remap your keys.
(Note: The latest version of this is available here in this Git repository.)
Uninstall:
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Remove the complex modification feature for Enthium that you activated.
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Optionally remove Karabiner-Elements, which can be done with Homebrew:
brew uninstall --cask karabiner-elements
Released under the same terms as Arno's Engram 2.0 keyboard layout's sources:
MIT License
Copyright 2022 Ricard Figueroa https://github.com/rfiga
Copyright 2021 Suraj N. Kurapati https://github.com/sunaku
Copyright 2021 Arno Klein https://github.com/binarybottlePermission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
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