Wrist rest

A wrist rest is a padded bar or pad placed on the desk directly in front of a keyboard or mouse, giving the wrist or the heel of the hand something soft to rest against between bursts of typing or clicking. Materials range from firm memory foam to gel-filled pads, each with a different feel and amount of give.

The intended use is resting the wrist during pauses, not sliding the wrist along the pad while actively typing, since dragging the wrist across a fixed point while the fingers move can itself create strain. Used this way, a wrist rest mainly helps by keeping the wrist from resting directly on a hard desk edge, which can press into the tendons that run through the wrist.

Height matching is the detail people get wrong most often, since a wrist rest that sits higher than the keyboard's front edge tilts the wrist upward, working against the neutral position it is meant to support. A low profile rest that lines up close to keyboard height, or a keyboard tray that is already positioned correctly, tends to work better than a thick rest layered on top of a too-high desk.