typerace

TypeRacer-style typing races in your terminal. Type quotes from movies, TV, books, speeches and songs word by word, then see your speed over the race and speedcubing-style averages.

• About 6,500 quotes, short to very long, mixed like TypeRacer. You won't see a quote again until you've done every quote of its length.
• Word by word, like the website: the input box holds the current word and clears once it's right. Mistakes show red and have to be fixed.
• Results: speed, accuracy, peak, pace through the race, a chart of your speed with typos marked, and your best single, ao5, ao12, ao25, ao50 and ao100, plus your last 12 races.
• Lightweight: one Python file plus the quotes, no dependencies on Linux or macOS. Colours follow your terminal's theme.

Install

pipx install typerace          # or: uv tool install typerace

Homebrew (macOS, Linux):

brew install elliottkobelansky/tap/typerace

Debian / Ubuntu: download the .deb from the latest release, then

sudo apt install ./typerace_*_all.deb

Needs Python 3.9 or newer. On Windows, pipx install typerace also installs windows-curses.

Use

typerace                 # a random quote, mixed lengths
typerace short           # or medium, long, verylong
typerace --history       # recent races and your averages

If your terminal uses a Nerd Font, set TYPERACE_NERD_FONT=1 to get a car on the race lane instead of ▶.

How it's scored

• Speed is (characters typed ÷ 5) ÷ minutes, the standard words-per-minute measure (a "word" is any 5 characters, spaces included). The timer starts at your first keypress and stops when you finish the last word. Typos aren't subtracted: you have to fix them, which costs time.
• Accuracy is correct keystrokes ÷ all keystrokes.
• Peak is your fastest stretch of at least 3 seconds (or 15% of the race).
• Pace is your speed in the first quarter, the middle half and the last quarter of the race.
• ao5 … ao100 are averages of your last 5 … 100 races, speedcubing style: the fastest and slowest 5% (rounded up) are dropped, so 1 each for ao5 and ao12, 2 for ao25, 3 for ao50 and 5 for ao100.

Your races are saved in $XDG_DATA_HOME/typerace (normally ~/.local/share/typerace).

Development

PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m typerace       # run from the source tree
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests    # tests (a full race is played in a pty)
sh packaging/build-deb.sh                # build dist/typerace_VERSION_all.deb
python3 tools/update_quotes.py           # refresh the quotes from Monkeytype

The demo GIF is recorded with VHS by the demo workflow (Actions tab → demo → Run workflow) from a tape that tools/demo.py writes.

Releases: bump __version__ in src/typerace/__init__.py, then push a tag like v0.2.0. GitHub Actions builds the wheel, sdist and .deb, attaches them to a GitHub release, and publishes to PyPI.

Credits and licence

The quotes are Monkeytype's English quote collection, used under the GPL-3.0; see QUOTES.md. Each quote belongs to its original source.

typerace is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.