Switches
What a mechanical switch does, the three feels, and how to read the specification sheet so you can pick one without pressing it first.
A mechanical keyboard has one switch under every key, and that switch decides almost everything about how the board feels. You can change the case, the plate and the keycaps and still have a keyboard you dislike typing on. Change the switches and it becomes a different keyboard.
The problem is that switches are sold on adjectives. Shops describe them as buttery, thocky, creamy and snappy, and none of those words survive the journey from one person’s ears to another’s. What does survive is the specification sheet. This page is about reading it.
What a switch actually does
A switch is a spring-loaded plastic mechanism about 15 mm tall. It sits in the keyboard’s plate and PCB, and a keycap pushes onto the top of it.
Press the key and a plastic stem slides down through the housing against a spring. Partway down, the stem’s side profile lets a metal leaf inside the housing spring closed, completing a circuit. That moment is the keypress. Keep going and the stem reaches the bottom of the housing, which is the end of the travel. Let go and the spring pushes everything back up.
Two things follow from that description, and both are more useful than any adjective.
First, the key registers before it reaches the bottom. On a standard switch that happens around 2 mm into roughly 4 mm of travel, so you are only required to press the key halfway. Most people bottom out anyway, out of habit, which is why the force at the bottom matters as much as the force at the top.
Second, all the sound comes from plastic hitting plastic. The stem striking the bottom housing makes the downstroke sound, and the stem striking the top housing on the way back makes the upstroke. Everything the hobby does to switches, lubing them, filming them, swapping housings, is an attempt to change those two impacts.
The three feels
Every switch belongs to one of three families, and the family tells you what the press does between the top and the bottom.
Linear. The force rises smoothly the whole way down, with nothing to tell you when the key registered. Nothing interrupts the press, which is why linears are the default recommendation for gaming and the common choice for people who bottom out every key anyway. Of the 48 switches in this index, 34 are linear, so this is also where the variety is.
Tactile. The stem carries a bump that you have to push past, placed at or just before the point the key registers. You feel the key engage. A tactile is not harder work overall, it is unevenly distributed work: light at the top, a brief rise, then lighter again before the bottom. The size of the bump varies enormously between switches sold under the same word.
Clicky. A tactile bump plus a mechanism that makes a deliberate, sharp click. The click is a separate part, either a jacket around the stem or a sprung bar in the housing, and it is loud on purpose. Everybody nearby will hear it. Two of the 48 switches indexed here are clicky, which is a fair reflection of how the hobby has moved.
There is a fourth thing sold alongside these, silent switches, which are usually linears or tactiles with rubber or silicone pads on the stem so it does not strike bare plastic at either end. They are much quieter and they feel slightly soft at the bottom, because something compressible is now in the way. Eight of the switches here are silent.
Reading the numbers
Five figures do most of the work. Where a maker publishes them, they are on every entry in the switch index.
Actuation force
The weight needed to register the key, in grams-force, written gf or sometimes cN. Across this index the published figures run from 32 gf to 60 gf.
Below about 40 gf a switch is light enough that resting your fingers can trigger a key. Above about 60 gf you are doing noticeable work on a long document. Most people land between 45 and 55 gf and stop thinking about it, which is a reasonable place to start if you have never tried anything.
Bottom-out force
The weight at the very bottom of the travel. This is the figure people skip and then regret, because if you bottom out every key, this is the weight you actually type against.
The gap between actuation and bottom-out is the more revealing number. A switch listed at 37 gf actuation and 42 gf bottom-out barely changes weight as it goes down, and feels flat and even. A switch listed at 36 gf and 55 gf firms up sharply, and the bottom feels like a floor. Same brand, same price bracket, completely different typing experience. Only 25 of the 48 switches here publish a bottom-out figure at all, which tells you something about how seriously the industry treats it.
Pre-travel
How far the key moves before it registers, in millimeters. Around 2 mm is standard. The published figures here run from 1.2 mm to 2.5 mm.
Anything under about 1.5 mm is sold as a speed switch, aimed at gaming. The trade is real: a shorter pre-travel means a faster response and also means a resting finger is closer to triggering a key, so typists tend to find them twitchy.
Total travel
How far the key moves in total. The MX standard is 4 mm, but shorter travel has become common: the figures here run from 3.0 mm to 4.0 mm, and 3.5 mm is now unremarkable. Shorter travel gets you to the bottom sooner, which feels quicker and gives you less room to stop short.
Housing and stem materials
Not numbers, but the closest thing to a reliable sound prediction, because the materials are what collide.
Nylon (often listed as PA66 or PA12) is soft and absorbs impact, giving a deeper and quieter sound. It appears in 30 of the 45 entries here that publish a housing.
Polycarbonate is harder and more brittle, giving a brighter, higher-pitched and louder sound. It is in 22 of them. Plenty of switches use a polycarbonate top over a nylon bottom, which is a deliberate split: the upstroke is brighter, the downstroke is deeper.
POM is slippery as well as hard, so it is smooth without much lubricant and pitched higher than nylon. It is also the overwhelming favorite for the stem, which is the part doing the sliding: 35 of 45 stems here are POM.
Filled nylons and harder plastics like POK and LCP show up in newer switches, generally where the maker wants a stiffer shell and a higher pitch than plain nylon gives.
Why it is called MX
The modern switch shape was designed by the German company Cherry, whose MX line has been in production since the 1980s. When the design patent expired, other manufacturers were free to build the same shape, and most of them did.
That is why the hobby exists in its current form. MX-compatible means a switch uses Cherry’s mounting and its cross-shaped stem, so any MX keycap fits it and any MX keyboard accepts it. It is the reason you can buy switches from nine different brands, as this index does, and know they will all fit the same board.
Cherry still makes switches, and Cherry MX now competes with the manufacturers its own expired patent created. Not every switch is MX-compatible: low-profile platforms such as Kailh’s Choc and Gateron’s KS-33 are shorter and use their own stems and keycaps, and Hall effect switches replace the metal leaf with a magnet and a sensor, so they need a board built for them.
Three pins or five
Look at the underside. Every switch has two metal legs that carry the signal. Some also have two plastic posts either side of them.
Two metal legs and no posts is a three-pin or plate-mount switch, and it fits anything. Add the posts and it is a five-pin or PCB-mount switch, which sits more securely but needs a PCB with the extra holes. Five-pin switches can be made to fit a three-pin board by clipping the plastic posts off with flush cutters, which is routine and does no harm.
Separately, a hot-swap board has sockets, so switches push in and pull out by hand. A board without them needs each switch soldered. If you expect to try more than one switch, buy hot-swap; it turns a two-hour job with a soldering iron into a ten-minute job with a puller.
What to do about factory lube
Most switches now ship with some lubricant applied at the factory, and the quality is inconsistent. Good factory lube makes a switch smooth out of the box. Bad factory lube is applied unevenly, so some keys feel gritty and others feel slow.
Hand lubing is the single most effective switch modification, and also the most tedious: it means opening every switch, applying grease to the stem rails and the spring, and reassembling. For a full board that is a few hours. Switch lubes covers what to use, and lubing your switches covers the process.
Two smaller modifications are worth knowing. Switch films are thin gaskets between the top and bottom housing that tighten a loose fit and reduce wobble. Spring swaps change the weight without changing anything else, which is the cheapest way to fix a switch you like that is too light or too heavy.
How to actually choose
If you have never tried anything, pick a linear or a tactile at 45 to 55 gf with a nylon or mixed housing, on a hot-swap board. It will be unremarkable in the best sense, and it gives you a reference point.
Once you have a reference point, the useful move is to change one thing at a time. Same weight, different housing material, to hear what the housing does. Same housing, heavier spring, to feel what weight does. Adjectives in product descriptions will not teach you this and neither will this page. Two switches will.
To compare figures side by side, the switch index filters by feel, brand and weight, and the full table sorts all 48 on any column. Where a figure is missing there, it is missing because the sources disagreed or published something impossible, and we would rather show a gap than a guess.