feature_wpm.md

Word Per Minute (WPM) Calculation

The WPM feature uses time between keystrokes to compute a rolling average words per minute rate and makes this available for various uses.

Enable the WPM system by adding this to your rules.mk:

WPM_ENABLE = yes

For split keyboards using soft serial, the computed WPM score will be available on the master AND slave half.

Configuration

Define	Default	Description
WPM_ESTIMATED_WORD_SIZE	5	This is the value used when estimating average word size (for regression and normal use)
WPM_ALLOW_COUNT_REGRESSION	Not defined	If defined allows the WPM to be decreased when hitting Delete or Backspace
WPM_UNFILTERED	Not defined	If undefined (the default), WPM values will be smoothed to avoid sudden changes in value
WPM_SAMPLE_SECONDS	5	This defines how many seconds of typing to average, when calculating WPM
WPM_SAMPLE_PERIODS	25	This defines how many sampling periods to use when calculating WPM
WPM_LAUNCH_CONTROL	Not defined	If defined, WPM values will be calculated using partial buffers when typing begins

'WPM_UNFILTERED' is potentially useful if you're filtering data in some other way (and also because it reduces the code required for the WPM feature), or if reducing measurement latency to a minimum is important for you.

Increasing 'WPM_SAMPLE_SECONDS' will give more smoothly changing WPM values at the expense of slightly more latency to the WPM calculation.

Increasing 'WPM_SAMPLE_PERIODS' will improve the smoothness at which WPM decays once typing stops, at a cost of approximately this many bytes of firmware space.

If 'WPM_LAUNCH_CONTROL' is defined, whenever WPM drops to zero, the next time typing begins WPM will be calculated based only on the time since that typing began, instead of the whole period of time specified by WPM_SAMPLE_SECONDS. This results in reaching an accurate WPM value much faster, even when filtering is enabled and a large WPM_SAMPLE_SECONDS value is specified.

Public Functions

Function	Description
get_current_wpm(void)	Returns the current WPM as a value between 0-255
set_current_wpm(x)	Sets the current WPM to x (between 0-255)

Callbacks

By default, the WPM score only includes letters, numbers, space and some punctuation. If you want to change the set of characters considered as part of the WPM calculation, you can implement your own bool wpm_keycode_user(uint16_t keycode) and return true for any characters you would like included in the calculation, or false to not count that particular keycode.

For instance, the default is:

bool wpm_keycode_user(uint16_t keycode) {
    if ((keycode >= QK_MOD_TAP && keycode <= QK_MOD_TAP_MAX) || (keycode >= QK_LAYER_TAP && keycode <= QK_LAYER_TAP_MAX) || (keycode >= QK_MODS && keycode <= QK_MODS_MAX)) {
        keycode = keycode & 0xFF;
    } else if (keycode > 0xFF) {
        keycode = 0;
    }
    if ((keycode >= KC_A && keycode <= KC_0) || (keycode >= KC_TAB && keycode <= KC_SLSH)) {
        return true;
    }

    return false;
}

Additionally, if WPM_ALLOW_COUNT_REGRESSION is defined, there is the uint8_t wpm_regress_count(uint16_t keycode) function that allows you to decrease the WPM. This is useful if you want to be able to penalize certain keycodes (or even combinations).

__attribute__((weak)) uint8_t wpm_regress_count(uint16_t keycode) {
    bool weak_modded = (keycode >= QK_LCTL && keycode < QK_LSFT) || (keycode >= QK_RCTL && keycode < QK_RSFT);
    
    if ((keycode >= QK_MOD_TAP && keycode <= QK_MOD_TAP_MAX) || (keycode >= QK_LAYER_TAP && keycode <= QK_LAYER_TAP_MAX) || (keycode >= QK_MODS && keycode <= QK_MODS_MAX)) {
        keycode = keycode & 0xFF;
    } else if (keycode > 0xFF) {
        keycode = 0;
    }
    if (((get_mods() | get_oneshot_mods()) & MOD_MASK_CTRL} || weak_modded) && (keycode == KC_DEL || keycode == KC_BSPC)) {
        return WPM_ESTIMATED_WORD_SIZE;
    }
    if (keycode == KC_DEL || keycode == KC_BSPC) {
        return 1;
    }
}