Dasher
Type by pointing instead of pressing keys. A remarkable idea that has barely moved in years, so check it runs before relying on it.
Our verdict
Be careful with this one. Dasher is a genuinely clever piece of work, invented at Cambridge, that lets somebody write using nothing but a pointing movement. Letters stream toward you and you steer into the ones you want, with prediction making the common paths wide and easy. For a person who cannot use a keyboard and has limited movement, that idea has no real competitor.
The problem is the state of the software. Version 4.11 dates from March 2010 and the 5.0 beta from April 2016. The code moved to the ACE Centre and there is no Flathub build, which is the usual safety net when a distribution stops packaging something. Whether it is available to you at all depends on which distribution you pick.
So treat it as something to test, not something to plan around. If pointing is how you write, check in a live USB session that Dasher installs and opens on the exact system you are considering, before you change anything on your PC. If it does, it may be excellent for you. If it does not, you need to know that now rather than after the switch.
What's good
- Lets you write with any pointing device at all, including eye tracking and a single switch
- Predicts what you are writing, so common words take very little movement
- Alphabet descriptions for over 150 languages are included
- Free, and still packaged by some distributions
What to know first
- The last stable release was 4.11 in March 2010, with a 5.0 beta in April 2016
- Not installed by default on any mainstream desktop, and missing from some distributions entirely
- Not on Flathub, so there is no reliable way to get a current build if your distribution drops it
- The way it works is unlike any other text entry, so there is a real learning period
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0-or-later)
- How you install it
- Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
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