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By Kaitlyn Wells and Justin Krajeski Cashmere Half Finger Gloves
We have reinstated a former pick, the Glider Gloves. They were previously called the Glider Gloves Urban Style Touchscreen Gloves; the style remains the same.
If you’ll excuse the pun, touchscreen gloves can be a handy addition to any winter arsenal. Although no pair is likely to keep your digits quite as toasty as regular gloves—or let you type as well as you would with bare fingers—a good pair successfully prevents your hands from getting too cold while you dash off a text, rather than a “txtjnZ.”
We’ve tested 80 models and found that the knit Moshi Digits Touchscreen Gloves 2.0 were the warmest and performed the most accurately in typing tests; plus, they comfortably fit a wide range of hand sizes. We also recommend a pair of fleece liner gloves, lightweight gloves for better dexterity, and—if you prefer a different look and feel—two classic and stylish leather options.
Lined with soft microfleece, these are unusually warm for touchscreen gloves—and a specially designed knit pattern and finger seams improve dexterity and typing accuracy. They come in three sizes that fit a wide range of hands.
No pair of touchscreen gloves is going to let you type a message with flawless accuracy and also keep your hands warm for hours on end. But if you need to type when it’s cold out, we recommend the unisex Moshi Digits Touchscreen Gloves 2.0. After multiple years of testing, we think these are the best touchscreen winter gloves. They’re easier to type in than the competition, they’re warm enough to use for your winter commute, and—following a redesign to include larger hands—they fit a wide range of hand sizes. We also found that the Moshi touchscreen gloves dry faster and have a better grip than other knit gloves we’ve tested.
The typing experience with the Moshi gloves is pretty good. But keep in mind that “pretty good” here is like saying “unbelievably great” in another product category. By comparison, when we asked a tester if a (since discontinued) pair of Lululemon gloves kept their hands warm, they typed the response: “By A.G. kk. Not a all.”
The Moshi pair’s knitwear pattern is taut and flexible, which is ideal for dexterity. And the seams are thin on the fingertips, which makes typing more predictable and reliable than with most other knit gloves. All of the fingers have conductive fiber sewn in—that’s what makes it possible to use gloves with a modern touchscreen—so you can type text messages with your thumbs or poke with your pinky.
The Moshi gloves were the coziest style we tested. Think of them as a combination of that fuzzy scarf Nana made you last year and the winter blanket that your pet hogs on the sofa. The gloves have a knitted exterior and a microfleece lining; they were the softest, and among the warmest, gloves we looked at. One panelist pointed out that the gloves performed well during high-energy activities, such as shoveling snow, and said they were “plenty warm” for a 15-minute dog walk.
Although a lot of winter knitwear can be a pain to dry, the Moshi gloves took only an hour to dry during our tests. But their knit construction catches easily on Velcro, and though the snagging didn’t tear the gloves or do any other real damage, it did lead to general fuzziness.
The Moshi gloves were redesigned from a previous version to make them more size inclusive. The old model had annoyingly short fingers and came in just two sizes (S/M and L/XL); they now have longer fingers and come in three unisex sizes (S, M, L), which means that they should now work well for a wider variety of hand sizes. Because the Moshi gloves have a simpler and more elastic fit than other styles we tested, it should be easy to determine which of the gloves’ three sizes are the right fit for you.
When we tested the size large with people who had bigger hands, they said the gloves fit well —far better than the size medium. Although they were a little tight around the fingers, it was much more manageable. Just keep in mind that Moshi measures hand size from wrist to fingertip, as opposed to by palm width, so confirm your size before ordering.
Senior staff writer Joel Santo Domingo has used the Moshi touchscreen gloves for multiple winters and says he’s been happy with their comfort (“They fit like ... a glove!”), accuracy, and ability to work smoothly, even with car touchscreens. But he did note that they’re not fully airtight. “As they’re knit, they will let in some wind on a really cold day,” he warned.
Sizes: S to L (unisex) Colors: light gray (S, M), dark gray (M, L) Materials: acrylic and nylon shell, microfleece lining
These unisex fleece glove liners—available in a wide range of sizes—are stretchy and fit great, making them well suited for outdoor activities as well as typing. But though they’re effective at blocking wind, they’re only warm enough to wear just on their own in milder temps.
May be out of stock
The unisex Black Diamond HeavyWeight ScreenTap Gloves have a stretchy second-skin fit that hugs your hand, making it easy to type. Since they’re liners, they’re not the warmest, but their fleece material does block out wind better than traditional knit fabrics. They work best at keeping you warm if you pair them with an outer glove or if you wear them solo when you’re being active. Of all the gloves we tested, the Black Diamond HeavyWeight ScreenTap Gloves—available in unisex sizes XS to XL—fit the most hand shapes and sizes.
In our typing tests, these Black Diamond gloves were among the most accurate. (The difference in accuracy between the Black Diamond gloves and our Moshi Digit Touchscreen Gloves pick was negligible.) The stretchy fleece material covers your hand nicely and offers good dexterity. All of the fingers on the gloves are conductive, though it’s easiest to type with your index fingers because the fit there is the best; the gloves’ thumbs were either too long or a little too tight on our testers.
Most of the typing mistakes we made with the Black Diamond gloves were due to the seam placement on our fingers, which some panelists felt made typing uncomfortable and less accurate, but most didn’t notice.
The Black Diamond gloves won’t keep your hands very warm in extreme cold or snow. They’re part of Black Diamond’s liner series—meaning you can wear them underneath an outer glove—and are only recommended solo for temperatures from 25 °F to 40 °F.
In our walk-in fridge testing, they received mixed reviews: Our panelists thought the elastic cuffs did a pretty good job of preventing the 30 °F air from seeping into the gloves, but their fingertips still got cold. When it came to real-world testing, these gloves kept our hands warm enough for a short dog walk in mid-30 °F temps. But we don’t recommend them if you’re, say, stuck outside your friend’s Bushwick apartment at 9 p.m. in 10 °F weather.
The manufacturer notes that these gloves fight off the cold better when you’re active rather than standing still, stating they’re “ideal for skiing, trail running, or hiking with your smartphone.” This is a point commonly made about soft-shell gear: It keeps you warm enough while you’re active, but you need something substantially warmer if you’re standing still.
If you get splashed by a passing vehicle during your morning commute, these gloves will dry out by lunchtime. When we melted crushed ice on the Black Diamond gloves, it took just two hours to air-dry them, thanks to their DWR (durable water repellent) coating.
The Black Diamond gloves are available in unisex sizes XS to XL, a wide range that offers many people the opportunity to find the right fit. The Black Diamond gloves’ stretchy fleece shell offers just enough give that they were never too loose in the palms, nor too snug in the fingers. The stretchiness also made it easy for our testers with long fingernails to move up a size without compromising the overall fit.
These gloves are all about function, not fashion. Whereas the soft and fluffy gray Moshi gloves are practically cuddle-worthy, the Black Diamond gloves are available only in black, and the stretch-knit fleece design reminded one panelist of what thieves wear in heist films. The only branding is a small Black Diamond logo on the back of the hand. A large patch of black leather on the palm makes it easy to grip slippery phones and metal railings. You can also connect the two gloves with a tiny clasp to keep them together at the bottom of your bag.
If the Black Diamond gloves are out of stock—not unusual when it comes to good and popular touchscreen gloves—LightWeight and MidWeight models are also available in the same design. Just note that both of these models are thinner and less warm than the HeavyWeights, which aren’t that warm to begin with.
Sizes: XS to XL (unisex) Color: black Materials: fleece shell, goat leather, nylon, polyester
These thin knit gloves don’t offer a ton of warmth or insulation—they’re best for temperatures above 40 °F—but they are comfortable, well priced, and very accurate for typing. And since copper yarn has been interwoven into their entire surface, the whole glove (not just the fingers) is touchscreen-compatible.
If comfort and typing accuracy are your top priorities—and you live in a milder climate, or your hands tend to overheat easily—then the Glider Gloves are a terrific option. Previously known as the Glider Gloves Urban Style Touchscreen Gloves, this is an inexpensive pair of thinner, lightweight knit gloves. Their conductivity is great—they’re interwoven with conductive copper yarn, so the entire glove (rather than just the fingers) is touchscreen-compatible. And because they’re thin, they’re also very accurate for typing, provided you get a good fit. (We recommend consulting the size guide and sizing down if your fingers are shorter than average.)
These are the thinnest gloves we tested, and they aren’t well suited for colder conditions. Since the Glider Gloves are so thin and their fit is a little baggy, they don’t trap body heat as well as our other picks. Their single-layer knit doesn’t offer much wind resistance, and they stop being warm enough in the low 40s (Fahrenheit). Also, they’re slow to dry if you get them wet—they took five hours to dry during our tests, which was longer than most pairs we reviewed.
On the plus-side, the Glider Gloves are thin enough to roll into a bundle (like a pair of socks), so you’ll spend less time digging through your bag to find them. Their low insulation makes them a good choice for people who want to wear gloves all day—for example, in a cold workplace—but need normal dexterity. And they’re a great buy if you live in a more temperate area or venture out into the cold for only short bursts at a time.
The manufacturer confirmed that a loose fit is normal for these gloves; their product page states that the gloves contain “2% spandex material that will conform to your hand the more you wear it.” But after testing these gloves for an extended period, we didn’t find that their shape changed much.
The gloves are available in black with a striped, olive green design. The fingers and palm are covered in a cluster of small silicone, honeycomb-style hexagonal holes to prevent smooth devices from slipping out of your hands.
Wirecutter’s Dana Ross said that she loves the Glider Gloves—not only are they extremely comfortable, but she’s never had an issue when using them with her phone, tablet, or car’s touchscreen. That said, it’s important to be realistic about their strengths. “These are definitely not cold-weather gloves,” said Dana. “So I also have a pair of thick ski gloves for when I’m shoveling snow or [need to be] outdoors for very long.”
Sizes: S to XL Color: black with a mélange pattern Materials: acrylic, nylon, spandex, copper yarn
Made from smooth goatskin leather, these pricey men’s gloves have a sophisticated, dressy look—and work surprisingly well for typing. With ribbed cuffs that keep the cold out and faux fur lining, they’re also the warmest pair we recommend.
Leather touchscreen gloves provide a more formal and refined (albeit more expensive) alternative to the standard knit and fabric options. If you’re looking to invest in warm, dressier-looking men’s leather gloves that provide touchscreen compatibility, our favorite luxury pair is the Canada Goose Workman Glove.
The plush, thick Workman gloves are the warmest pair of touchscreen gloves we recommend. They have a smooth goatskin leather exterior, polyester faux fur lining, and ribbed wool cuffs to keep out the cold. Though these are probably not warm enough for sub-zero temperatures, they’re extremely well suited as stylish everyday gloves to get you through chilly commutes, dog walks, or other cold schleps. We also found that they weren’t particularly vulnerable to water damage (as leather goes); if you fall into a snowbank while wearing these, the results won’t be catastrophic.
Typing with the Workman gloves is surprisingly accurate, especially considering how heavy they feel; all of our testers were impressed by their accuracy. However, they only have touchscreen capabilities on the index fingers, so your typing options are more limited.
The Workman gloves are available only in men’s sizes, from S to XL. They fit our testers’ hands well, providing a little more give in the knuckles and palms than some other leather gloves—including the Nordstrom Cashmere Lined Leather Touchscreen Gloves in the Competition section—which can be too constricting. This ease helps with typing dexterity and means you’re less likely to take the gloves off in frustration when trying to send a quick text.
Sizes: S to XL (men’s) Color: black Materials: goatskin leather, wool trim, polyester faux fur lining
These sleek, gift-worthy unisex leather gloves are comfortable and well made. They offer above-average typing accuracy, but they’re more for style than true warmth.
For a sleek, refined, and accurate pair of unisex touchscreen leather gloves that will never go out of style, look no further than the Kent Wang Deerskin Touchscreen Gloves. They’re on the thinner side and look and feel expensive—with calf-skin palms, deerskin backs, and luxe cashmere lining—but they aren’t exorbitantly priced. They make a particularly nice gift.
The entire surface of the Kent Wang gloves is touchscreen-compatible—a notable difference from our Canada Goose Workman Glove men’s leather pick, which only has touchscreen capabilities in the index fingers. In comparison to the other leather gloves we tested, the Kent Wang gloves had above-average typing accuracy, though they weren’t as accurate as our other picks (including the leather one). The thick seams along the fingers meant we had to use our finger pads to type and swipe (as opposed to the tips or sides of the fingers, which feels more natural).
The Kent Wang gloves are reasonably resilient in wet-accident scenarios; their leather exterior shed moisture and prevented water stains better than most other leather gloves. If you drop something in the snow, you don’t have to be overly concerned about causing water damage to the gloves when you pick it up.
The Kent Wang gloves are not as warm as the knit Moshi Digits Touchscreen Gloves 2.0 or the leather Canada Goose Workman Gloves, but they are warmer than the fleece Black Diamond HeavyWeights ScreenTap Gloves. They’re best suited for warm winter days, parts of the country that have milder winters, shorter outings, or dressier occasions like December weddings or going to the orchestra.
The Kent Wang gloves come in unisex sizes from 7 to 10.5; after size 7 the next size up is 7.5, then it jumps to whole sizes only (8.5, 9.5, and 10.5), which we found unusual. The product page for the gloves has instructions (accompanied by a simple illustration) for how to measure your hand to get the correct size. However, since the sizing of these gloves is more specific than that of our other picks—and leather is not the most forgiving material—you may have more difficulty finding the proper fit.
With that said, our panelists managed to find their correct sizes in the Kent Wang gloves. They said the gloves fit them well and were not constricting, a common complaint about many leather gloves. The gloves had enough space for the testers’ knuckles and palms, which made movement and typing easy.
Sizes: 7, 7.5, 8.5, 9.5, 10.5 Colors: black, dark brown Materials: calf-leather palm, deerskin back, cashmere lining
We’ve researched hundreds of gloves and tested over 80 in person. We considered factors like online customer reviews, company reputations, availability across major retailers, and size ranges.
Heavy-duty gloves are hard to type with, and the thinnest gloves don’t keep your hands much warmer than if you were wearing no gloves at all. So we focused mostly on the middle ground: gloves that would be warm enough to get you through a commute.
In 2019, I (Justin Krajeski) tested 20 gloves myself. This meant wearing four pairs of gloves each day for a week on my commute, during lunch breaks, and while running errands around New York City in December.
After 11 pairs were eliminated, we enlisted a panel of four Wirecutter staffers with very different hand shapes and sizes to test each pair of gloves. They assessed the gloves for typing accuracy, fit, appearance, comfort, and ease of use (like the ability to pull your keys from your pocket while wearing them, for instance).
We tested the nine finalists on the loading dock of our Long Island City, New York office on a day when the weather oscillated between rain and light snow; the temperature was about 40 °F. While a King Princess record blared, Wirecutter staffers wore each set of gloves as they attempted to fill out a survey on their phones, and we used their responses—and typos—to inform our picks.
In a prior round of testing, we also tested the gloves’ durability and drying time. We ran strips of Velcro across each pair ten times to see how easily the fabric snagged. We melted crushed ice on each pair of gloves and tracked the drying time. This told us how fast they’d dry after an afternoon snowball fight with the kids or during the commute home on a sleeting day.
As we’ve all probably discovered at some point, regular gloves don’t work with the capacitive screens on phones and smartwatches. So if you want to use your device when it’s cold out, you need to either take off a glove or get gloves that are designed to be compatible with touchscreens.
Knit touchscreen gloves are embedded with special materials—like patches of conductive materials, or, more commonly, conductive threads (typically silver or copper) in the fabric—that tell the capacitive touchscreen on your smartphone or tablet that you’re interacting with it.1 The thread works by conducting electricity from a finger to the tip of the glove covering that finger.
Leather touchscreen gloves, on the other hand, embed the leather itself with nanoparticles of silver, which produces full-hand conductivity. Because the leather can conduct electricity from any part of your hand to any fingertip, this technology is more forgiving of a loose fit than knit gloves.
Unfortunately, every touchscreen glove we’ve tested exists somewhere on a continuum of warm but inaccurate to cold but good for typing, and no glove was truly excellent at both. Inaccurate gloves led to incoherent text messages, while thin but accurate gloves left us freezing in cold weather. You may find that interacting with your phone via voice commands like Siri and Google Assistant may be the best option in certain circumstances.
In our trials, we focused on gloves that existed in that middle ground of the continuum—those suited for when you’re out walking the dog or waiting for a train, rather than those designed for Arctic conditions or heavy labor. They keep your fingers from freezing while you’re brushing the snow off your windscreen, and they allow you to fire off a quick text or get directions on Google.
Most touchscreen gloves also become less effective over time. A pair of touchscreen gloves may only last you a full winter or two, because the conductive material that enables touchscreen compatibility can wear down.
Over the years, we’ve tested a number of the cheap touchscreen gloves that are typically kept in stock at major chain stores during the winter. We’ve never been particularly impressed by any of them, but whatever Target is currently selling is usually good enough. Case in point: These women’s Target Wild Fable Tech Touch Knit Gloves are, well, fine. Like most gloves of this ilk, they’re prone to typos, and they aren’t going to shield you from the bitter cold. They are, however, a lot better than nothing—cute, inexpensive, and totally adequate in a pinch.
The Aegend and TrailHeads running gloves worked poorly with our capacitive touchscreens, and they were thin, so they didn’t keep our panelists’ hands warm during testing.
The knit Agloves Polar Sport gloves are thin, and they just don’t compare to our Moshi knit pick in warmth or quality.
The Black Diamond Lightweight Wooltech Gloves and Heavyweight Wooltech Liners are made by the same manufacturer as one of our picks, the Black Diamond HeavyWeight ScreenTap Gloves. Although they were comfortable to wear, both Wooltech gloves caused lots of typos. Plus, they were looser around the wrist and less protective in winter weather conditions than our pick.
We also tried Black Diamond’s Softshell Gloves; they were so baggy on all of our testers that typing was nearly impossible.
The Burton Men’s Touch-N-Go Glove Liners were baggy; their poor fit was a hindrance when it came to typing on our phones.
When we say that we could not type more than “t fdkf hag” while wearing the Dimore Winter Gloves—and that they ripped at the seams when we pulled them over our knuckles—we do mean that literally.
The Nordstrom Cashmere Lined Leather Touchscreen Gloves are sold in a women’s cut, so they fit petite hands better than our Kent Wang unisex leather pick. But their fit is overly snug and makes it hard to type and maneuver, and they’re thinner, so they’re not as warm.
We retested the North Face Commutr Etip Gloves. The arc of the gloves (which North Face calls “radiometric articulation”) left our hands frozen at an uncomfortable angle, and we couldn’t flex our fingers. All of this made typing on our devices impossible. The North Face Etip Recycled Gloves have clunky conductive panels, while the North Face Denali Etip Gloves had a boxy fit, making precise typing almost impossible.
The Isotoner Men’s Fleece Touchscreen Gloves are made of water-repellent fleece that’s slightly gathered at the wrist. They simply weren’t as comfortable as any of our top picks.
This article was edited by Ingela Ratledge Amundson and Jennifer Hunter. Nick Guy contributed reporting.
Yes, but you should manage your expectations. In our experience, touchscreen gloves mostly fall into two categories: very warm and fairly inaccurate, or thinner and better for typing. The inaccurate gloves produce incoherent text messages, thus negating the point of having touchscreen capabilities. The thin but accurate gloves can provide warmth in milder conditions, but left us chilly in extra-cold weather. They’re better than no gloves at all, but when the temps truly drop, you may want to engage with your phone through voice-activated assistants like Siri and Google Assistant instead.
Standard leather gloves won’t work reliably or accurately on your phone unless they’ve been embedded with special touchscreen technology. We recommend two pairs of leather touchscreen gloves in this guide, the men’s Canada Goose Workman Gloves and the unisex Kent Wang Deerskin Touchscreen Gloves. Both pairs are well made and good-looking, and they offer above-average typing accuracy.
Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer who advocates for greater work flexibility by showing you how to work smarter remotely without losing yourself. Previously, she covered pets and style for Wirecutter. She's never met a pet she didn’t like, although she can’t say the same thing about productivity apps. Her first picture book, A Family Looks Like Love, follows a pup who learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family.
Justin Krajeski is a former staff writer reporting on everyday carry at Wirecutter. He previously wrote about tech at Wirecutter. He carries things every day. He’s very well versed in carrying.
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Finger Gloves For Phone Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).