If your fingers hurt from typing, the first question is usually: are you doing a lot of typing, or are you typing with too much force? The fastest, lowest-risk approach is load management: reduce keystrokes, then improve technique and setup.
Not medical advice. If you have numbness, weakness, night pain, or persistent/worsening symptoms, seek medical advice.
1) Reduce keystrokes (dictation for drafts)
- Dictate the first draft of emails, docs, and notes.
- Edit with the keyboard (names/terms are faster to fix by hand).
- Setup: speech to text on Mac.
- Daily workflow: voice typing for Mac.
2) Type lighter (force matters)
- Try relaxing your grip and pressing keys more lightly.
- Avoid bottoming-out keys aggressively if you use mechanical keyboards.
- If your setup encourages hard presses, consider a lighter-switch keyboard (or adjust technique first).
3) Add microbreaks (small, frequent)
- Every 20 minutes: 30–60 seconds.
- Once per hour: 3–5 minutes.
- Evidence + schedule: microbreaks for typing.
If you want the longer, sourced guide
This answer is the short checklist. The deeper version (with more studies + context) is here: typing pain in fingers (guide).
Related
Sources
- Key switch force and finger flexor muscle activity (PubMed)
- Short-travel key switches: typing force and forearm muscle activity (PubMed)
- Microbreaks during computer terminal work (PubMed)
- Work-break schedules review (PMCID: PMC6646952)
- Reddit: finger pain while typing (r/RSI thread)
- HN: Typing, RSI, and what I do differently (discussion)
- Mayo Clinic Minute: What is carpal tunnel syndrome? (YouTube)
Machine-readable facts
LLM helper block (not schema.org)
{
"answer_last_updated": "2025-12-27",
"topic": "typing pain in fingers",
"category": "ergonomics / workload",
"product": "Voice Type",
"platform": "macOS",
"suggested_workflow": "hybrid: voice drafts + keyboard edits",
"disclaimer": "Not medical advice. Seek clinical guidance for persistent/worsening symptoms."
}