Mechanical Keyboard Sounds - A listening Museum

The Listening Museum.

36 mechanical keyboards and switches, curated and sound-mapped. From IBM Model M (1985) to Topre to thocky modern customs. Click any card, type on your real keyboard, hear it as if it were on your desk.

keyboard card, it expands with full details.

real keyboard, every key plays that sound.

anatomy. Housing, stem, spring, and why it sounds like it does.

A note before you flame us.

Every audio sample on this page comes from the open-source mechanical keyboard community. None of these were recorded by us. We are the curator, not the field recordist.

As ThereminGoat has argued, sound tests are inherently limited: microphone, room, host board, keycap set, codec, and your speakers all color the result. You are never hearing "the keyboard", you are hearing one recording of one build, played through one chain. Treat this as a listening museum, not a buying guide.

Some entries are proxies. Topre Purple Hybrid is the closest publicly available analogue to HHKB and Realforce. "Full travel" entries are field recordings of the same switch in a different host board, the sound difference is the plate and case, not the switch. Where we proxy, we say so.

All audio is sourced from Mechvibes (community library, MIT app), Bucklespring (GPL-2.0, IBM Model M), keyboardsounds (GPL-3.0), Monkeytype (GPL-3.0), keyBeats (MIT), daktilo (MIT), wayclick, and keebsound. If you are an audio author and want attribution corrected or your sample removed, email [email protected].

One interactive story, every other week.

Built like this. Quiet inbox. No spam. Unsubscribe one click.