How long does it take to learn touch typing?

Most people can type without looking within two to three weeks of daily 15-minute practice, though comfortable speed takes another month or two.

Should I use a keyboard cover while learning?

It helps, because it removes the option of glancing down. A simple cloth over your hands achieves the same thing.

How to Type Faster Without Looking at the Keyboard

The transition from hunt-and-peck to touch typing, including how to survive the frustrating first two weeks.

Looking at the keyboard puts a hard ceiling on your speed at roughly 35–40 WPM, because your eyes have to travel between the screen and your hands for every unfamiliar key. Removing that loop is the single largest improvement most typists ever make.

Why it is worth the temporary slowdown

When you first stop looking, your speed will drop by half. That is normal and it lasts about ten days. What you are building is a spatial map in motor memory — your fingers learn where keys are relative to home row, rather than your eyes finding them each time.

The transition plan

Days 1–3: home row only. Type only words made from A S D F J K L and the surrounding home keys. Keep your index fingers on the F and J bumps between every word.

Days 4–7: add the top row. Introduce E, R, T, U, I, O in short words. Return to home row after each letter — the return is what encodes the position.

Days 8–12: add the bottom row and punctuation. C, V, B, N, M, comma and full stop. These are the keys people cheat on most.

Days 13–21: full prose at low speed. Ordinary sentences, no looking down, accuracy over 95%.

Practical tricks that help

Cover your hands. A light cloth or a keyboard cover removes the temptation entirely.
Increase the font size of the text you are copying so your eyes stay relaxed on the screen.
Say nothing, look nowhere. Fix your gaze about three words ahead of what you are typing.
Do not correct by looking. If you feel an error, finish the word, then fix it.

Common sticking points

The number row. Almost everyone still looks for digits. Practise a short numeric drill separately — dates, phone-style sequences, amounts.

Symbols and shift. Use the opposite-hand shift key. Left shift for right-hand capitals, right shift for left-hand capitals. Using one shift key for everything twists your wrist and slows you down.

Laptop vs external keyboards. Key spacing differs. If you will sit an exam on a desktop keyboard, practise on one.

Knowing when you have made it

You have genuinely transitioned when you can type a full paragraph in the dark and be surprised by how few errors there are. At that point, speed work becomes productive — before it, speed work just entrenches bad habits.