You’ve been asking for it and your butter is served! This has been highly requested from our community and we’ve delivered to bring you a smoother typing experience. At TypeRacer, we’ve been playing with this and now understand why this was wanted and we love it too.

Starting today, Smooth Caret is now released and available for everyone to use and is the default option. Don’t like it? You can customize it or completely turn it off. Read below how to do exactly that and for a brief history lesson on what a “Smooth Caret” even is!

Customize

You can turn it off entire or customize the FPS and speed of the smoothness. You can even change more options like the font type, font size, by clicking ‘change display mode’ when inside of a race.

History Behind The Smooth Caret

According to our research, back in the preview version of Microsoft Office 2013 (also known as Office 15), Microsoft introduced something pretty cool: ‘Smooth Typing’. This meant that when you typed in Word, Excel, or even Outlook, the letters appeared on the screen in a smooth, flowing way. This feature made it into the official release on January 29, 2013.

Interestingly, the first talks about this feature were mostly about turning it off. Some users found it distracting. Here are a couple of sources from back in August 2012 showing how to disable it:

Sources:

• Office 2013: Disable Cursor Animation (Aug 6, 2012)
• Tip: Improve Microsoft Office 2013 Performance by Disabling Unnecessary Animations (Aug 22, 2012)

Fast forward to today, and the ‘Smooth Typing’ feature is still around in the latest versions of Microsoft Office. It’s interesting to see how this feature, initially met with mixed reactions, has stood the test of time.

Moreover, the typing test website Monkeytype.com took inspiration from ‘Smooth Typing’ and introduced it to their platform in 2020. It quickly became a hit among typists, showing how much people enjoy and request this smooth typing experience and has been implemented in a few other various typing websites.

VOTE: Do You Like Smooth Caret?

Click on the thumbs up or down to vote whether you like this new smooth movement or not. It’s not for everyone, but we hope a lot of you do enjoy it.