What is the best way to practise Morse code?

Little and often, by ear. Fifteen minutes a day of copying characters you hear beats a long weekly session, and practising all three skills, hearing, reading and sending, stops one from lagging behind. MorseForge brings back each character just before you would forget it.

Can I practise Morse code with the sound off, or if I am deaf?

Yes. Settings has a Signal option with three choices: sound, lamp or both. With the lamp, every character in practice, copy practice, the daily wire and the 60-second challenge flashes on screen with the same timing as the tone, so you read Morse by light, as signal lamps and heliographs always have. The lesson, the tree and the translator flash a lamp as well.

Morse code practice

Morse code practice here has three modes, because recognising, hearing and sending a character are separate skills. Copy characters by ear, read printed dots and dashes, or key them yourself. Spaced repetition picks each prompt from what you are closest to forgetting, and a character only counts as mastered with at least 10 answers in each of the three skills and an average of 90% or better across them.

Practice set-up

Signal Tree order

Mode

Hear it, then name it.

Characters

AdjustAnswer by, teaching order

Answer by

Type the character.

Teaching order

Follows the structure of the code itself: E and T, then every two-element character, then every three. You finish each stage having completed a whole layer of the Morse tree, which is why the tree lights up in rings rather than at random. Best if you want the alphabet to make sense rather than just be memorised.

More join after a session at 90% accuracy over at least 25 answers, on the My method pool.

Three modes, three skills

Recognising a character, hearing it and sending it are separate skills, and each one is scored on its own. A character only counts as mastered with at least 10 answers in each of the three skills and an average of 90% or better across them, so a letter you have read but never heard still comes back for practice.

Listen
Hear it, then name it: trains copying by ear: a character plays as real CW tone, and you name it. This is the skill every other one leans on, and the one a chart cannot teach.
Read
Read the dots and dashes: shows the dots and dashes and asks what they spell. Quick to drill and useful for reading printed code, though it is the one to lean on least.
Send
Key the character yourself: asks you to key the character yourself, on the keyboard or the on-screen key, so your hand learns the rhythm as well as your ear.

Which order to practise in

"My method" practises the characters your teaching order has unlocked so far. The default is the Signal Tree order; you can switch under Adjust at any time, and your progress carries over. The reasoning behind each, and why the order matters at all, is in which order to learn Morse code in.

Signal TreeShortest characters first, one layer of the tree per stage: Follows the structure of the code itself: E and T, then every two-element character, then every three. You finish each stage having completed a whole layer of the Morse tree, which is why the tree lights up in rings rather than at random. Best if you want the alphabet to make sense rather than just be memorised.
KochTwo characters at full speed, add one at 90% accuracy: Ludwig Koch’s method, and what most clubs and courses teach. It starts at your target speed with just K and M — hard, dissimilar characters — and adds one more only once you are hitting 90%. Nothing ever slows down, so you never learn to count elements. Harder at the start and faster overall.
AlphabeticalA to Z, then 0 to 9: The order you already know, which makes it easy to track what you have covered. It is the weakest of the three for actually learning: A, B and C sound nothing alike in difficulty, so the load jumps around unpredictably. Included because people ask for it.

When single characters feel easy

Copy practice sends whole lines (code groups, words and callsigns) and grades what you wrote character by character. Or take the 60-second test: a fixed run of characters at a fixed speed, with a link at the end that gives a friend the identical run to beat.

Common questions

What is the best way to practise Morse code?: Little and often, by ear. Fifteen minutes a day of copying characters you hear beats a long weekly session, and practising all three skills, hearing, reading and sending, stops one from lagging behind. MorseForge brings back each character just before you would forget it.
Can I practise Morse code with the sound off, or if I am deaf?: Yes. Settings has a Signal option with three choices: sound, lamp or both. With the lamp, every character in practice, copy practice, the daily wire and the 60-second challenge flashes on screen with the same timing as the tone, so you read Morse by light, as signal lamps and heliographs always have. The lesson, the tree and the translator flash a lamp as well.