On every keyboard I get, I swap the switches out for silent tactiles[0][1] that I've selected through trial and error. Quiet is really nice (my mouse clicks are louder), but the way they feel is fantastic.
I wish there was a brick and mortar that let you try out a good range of these switches. Places like microcenter have the popular standard choices, but there's so many other switches out there that are just worlds different.
[0] standard preference: https://a.co/d/03j6Boy0
[1] low profile preference: https://a.co/d/06yVB6jg
>My keyboard demo day at Fry's (2011)
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=25572.0
yeah silent tactiles are a gap, the tactile section is all loud stuff (pandas, banana split), nothing quiet. boba u4 should be on there, adding next round.
brick and mortar thing is real. microcenter's basically it for physical. novelkeys and kbdfans sell $8 switch tester packs with ~10 switches each, not a store but at least you feel them before committing.
I'm admittedly only a very surface level keyboard person (I can tell you the difference between Cherry reds, blues, and browns and know what a buckling spring is but not much use outside that), but aren't tactiles generally pretty quiet? Not as quiet as linears but honestly what I expect a keyboard to sound like
Generally yes, I think many people confuse and correlate clicky switches with tactile switches.
Clicky switches are always tactile, but tactile switches arent always clicky.
Some have even quieter actuation but at that point I'd argue the biggest difference relates to bottoming out the switch and if theres any dampening efforts there.
Yes, silence should be the default