Coming soon

KeBe v2

Mindless Mastery, now with a hub

The v1 layout, all in black, in a lower, screwless case, with three more USB-C ports on the back. Leave an address and you'll hear when pre-orders open.

What changes

v1's board, with a hub built in

KeBe v2 on a desk at night, its legends lit in a rainbow by the per-key RGB.

Four USB-C ports

One goes to your computer. The other three are a USB 2.0 hub inside the board, so the mouse receiver and the flash drive plug into the keyboard instead of the laptop.

The same layout

Sixty-eight keys on the same Matrix-Dvorak grid as v1. Nothing you learn on one is wasted on the other. Where a key has an Fn-layer legend, it sits below its main one.

Lower, and no screws

One piece of black nylon, 8.65 mm tall against v1's 9.45, that snaps around the board, switches and black plate.

Still yours to change

Kailh Choc hot-swap sockets, per-key RGB that lights each legend through the black caps, and QMK on v1's STM32 controller, so a v1 keymap carries straight over.

v2 is wired: the battery-and-Bluetooth design is not for sale, and this is the board that ships. None of the v2 pictures or videos are photographs. The 3D model at the top and the plain renders come straight from its CAD; the desk, studio and night scenes, the clip above included, set that CAD model in AI-generated surroundings.

Peace of mind · speed of thought

Why make the change?

The keyboard you learned on was designed around a typewriter. Two of its habits survive on every laptop, and neither has a reason to any more.

The stagger

Rows knocked sideways

On a typewriter every key sat on a lever, and each row was shifted sideways so the levers could pass one another. A keyboard has no levers, yet the offset stayed. KeBe's keys sit in straight columns: each finger moves straight up and down its own.

The letter order

Letters kept apart

Every typebar struck the same spot on the page. Hit two keys at once, or too close together, and their bars could collide on the way up and jam. So QWERTY was laid out to keep common letter pairs apart: an order for the machine, not for your fingers. Dvorak's is laid out for the hands.

Nothing on a digital keyboard can jam. Keeping either habit only costs your hands.

KeBe v2 from above: 68 keys in straight columns, the Dvorak letters in the middle, the modifiers mirrored on both sides.
  1. 01

    The home row does the work

    Dvorak puts every vowel under the left hand and the most-used consonants under the right, on the row your fingers rest on. About 70% of English keystrokes land there, against about 30% on QWERTY.

  2. 02

    Hands take turns

    With the vowels on one side and the consonants on the other, most words alternate hands: one hand reaches while the other strikes, for a steadier rhythm and less work for any single finger.

  3. 03

    Both thumbs, both sides

    Two space bars sit under the thumbs, and Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Fn and the ◆ key are mirrored on each side, so a shortcut takes one key from each hand instead of a stretch with one.

  4. 04

    Sixty-eight keys, nothing missing

    Hold Fn and the left hand's home keys become arrows, the right hand's a number pad, and the number row F1 to F10. Media controls sit in the middle columns. Nothing is more than a finger's reach from home.

Nothing sits where a standard keyboard puts it, so you learn KeBe as a new instrument instead of unpicking old habits one key at a time. Switching takes practice, and the first weeks are slower. Once it is in your hands you stop thinking about the keyboard at all: that is the mindless mastery in the name.

KeBe v1

The board that started it. Sixty-eight keys, wired, hand-built in small batches — and sold out.

See the v1