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Comment by zabil | Hacker News Reader

I use a MacBook pro and I really want to use a split keyboard for better ergonomics. I tried a few, however I feel that I need lift my arm to use a trackpad (external or the one on the mac) or a mouse, whereas on the mac I don't have to lift by hand I can just move my wrist.

The trackpad has a lot of nice features missing in a mouse. I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts but I still need to reach for the pad.

Does any body have a workaround for this?

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I use a split keyboard/trackball combination. The trackball sits right in the middle of the split. For me this is close enough experience to using the laptop/trackpad combination. On top of that, I'm using qmk firmware on my keyboard and I have a layer dedicated to mouse movements/actions. I find myself use that or the trackball like 50/50.

I'd love to see a shipping keyboard with a proper-size trackball in the thumb-wing.

I had half-baked plans to integrate the trackpad from a Steam controller into a custom build, but I got lost in the planning stages a while back.

Agree. Even with it's quirks, I found the trackball/trackpoint my earlier Thinkpads useful and ergonomic.

Scrolling, clicking should be a part of the keyboard ergonomics design IMHO.

I also wonder why there's so few experimental keyboards with any kind of built-in mouse. Realistically you need one and I feel like switching one hand between the keyboard and mouse should be optimized as well. At the moment I'm using a 65% keyboard and a Logitech track ball next to it. I'm mostly happy, but I also feel it could be improved. The ThinkPad TrackPoint keyboard is probably the best solution I've found so far. In prehistoric times I've tried the TouchStream but that just didn't click for me.

Huge trackpad fan here - if you're thinking about switching to mouse-life try the Logitech MX Master 3.

It has five programmable buttons with hundreds of options, a second scroll wheel, is wireless, and is very, very comfortable.

I have my extra buttons set to: (thumb controllable) Expose, Forward, Back (behind the main scroll wheel) click-and-hold-to-pan (scroll wheel click) screen shot

Then the secondary scroll wheel is set to scroll between tabs.

It's all the functionality I'm used to in a trackpad, but with even less motion. I HIGHLY recommend this mouse.

I use the UHK exactly for this. Keyboard commands + mouse layer keys for those UIs that are pointer-only.

While it doesn't replace a mouse completely (I wouldn't use it for games), it does work for all my day-to-day work (development, writing, workflows) with shortcuts and the built in mouse layer.

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