A Keyboard for Your Non-Mouse Hand

The Left-Hand Pad is a twelve-key macropad with two rotary knobs at $49, built for the hand that is not on the mouse. For most of a working day that hand is doing one of two things: holding down a modifier key, or nothing. This page is about whether it is worth giving it a third option.

What is that hand doing right now?

Watch it for ten minutes. It reaches for a modifier, it lifts to hit a key on the far side of the board, it goes back to the desk. Most of the reaching is for combinations you already know by heart, which is exactly why they are worth moving: a shortcut you have memorised is a shortcut you can fire blind on a pad, without looking down.

The shortcuts you have not memorised are a different case. Those belong in a command palette, not on a key, because you will forget what you assigned.

How many keys does that hand actually need?

Fewer than you would guess. Count the actions you repeat more than a few times an hour. Most people who do this land somewhere between four and a dozen.

Below about five, the EM Mini Pad at $75 is enough, and it takes up almost no desk. Around a dozen, the Left-Hand Pad at $49 is the plainest fit. If the list keeps growing, the KM16 Macropad at $119 gives you sixteen keys plus layers, so the same block can mean one thing in an editor and another in a video timeline.

Should it be keys, a knob, or a big button?

Match the control to the shape of the action. Keys for anything with two states: run, commit, accept, toggle. Knobs for anything continuous: volume, scroll through a long output, scrub, brush size. A large button for the one or two actions you fire constantly and want to hit without aiming, which is the whole argument for the Slam Buttons at $29.

Mixing them is normal. A pad under the resting hand and a pedal under a foot is a common split, since the foot can take the action you want available even when both hands are busy.

Will this help with wrist strain?

We are not going to claim that, because we cannot. None of this is a medical device and we have not tested any of it in a way that would let us make a health claim.

What we can say plainly is what changes: you replace a stretch across the keyboard with a press directly under a resting hand, and you replace some mouse travel with a key. Whether that helps you is between you and someone qualified to say. If you are already in pain, see that person first, not a shop.

Where should it physically sit?

Close enough that your hand falls onto it from rest without moving your forearm. If you have to reach for the pad, you have rebuilt the problem you bought it to solve, one inch closer.

Height matters more than people expect for a device you rest on rather than type on. A tall block under a resting palm angles the wrist up; a low one does not. That is the practical reason to look at the footprint and the profile before the key count.

If you would rather see the trade-off between a small pad and a big one written out, read is a second keyboard just for shortcuts worth it.