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polyphenol

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Sep 9, 2020
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Has anyone collated information about how Apple manage dictionaries, including added words, primarily in macOS, but also across iPadOS, IOS – and over multiple devices?

I’d like to understand what happens right now – without having to check everything out step by step! I know it feels as if I have to repeatedly add words, the same words, again and again. But afterwards, I’m never quite sure if it is my memory or reality.

I want to use the same dictionaries everywhere. Can’t think of any sensible reason to want different ones on different devices (e.g. two macOS machines), nor across platforms (macOS, iPadOS and IOS). Nor between different apps on any one machine. Someone might have a reason, but I don’t.

I’d like to think that if I add a word to the dictionary, it synchronises across all devices. And if I get a new device, it can grab the information from iCloud or the other device(s).

And that if I have added a word, my added word will be properly included as a potential correction or prediction.

And that I can manage my added words so I can include tenses, plurals, etc. Some sort of a dictionary review editor – I might add a word and later decide to check which words I have recently added and ensure variations are included. Also to be able to easily remove words I might accidentally have added!

The final bit, being able to use those same principles for Firefox and Microsoft Office apps. Might be more difficult since each of those already has its own way of doing things. But if nothing else, making additional words synchronise across all apps on all devices would be great.

Yes, I do use a range of very specialist words. Primarily medical/scientific.

Around thirty years ago I was finding it crazy that Microsoft Word and Excel had entirely separate dictionaries. And that was when the disc space occupied actually mattered!
 
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On your Mac, you can add words to the Local Dictionary, which is [your user name]> Library > Spelling. This is where words learned when using spell check in some applications gets saved, and you can also add words to it. I don't have a list of all the apps that use this, but I tested with Pages, Numbers and Text Edit and it worked. You could put an alias of it on your desktop.

I don't know how MS Office products custom dictionaries work.

We're not able to modify the macOS Dictionary.app files however, and I don't believe there's a way to make the Local Dictionary available cross-platform to iPadOS and iOS, but maybe someone has a creative solution.
 
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On your Mac, you can add words to the Local Dictionary, which is [your user name]> Library > Spelling. This is where words learned when using spell check in some applications gets saved, and you can also add words to it. I don't have a list of all the apps that use this, but I tested with Pages, Numbers and Text Edit and it worked. You could put an alias of it on your desktop.

I don't know how MS Office products custom dictionaries work.

We're not able to modify the macOS Dictionary.app files however, and I don't believe there's a way to make the Local Dictionary available cross-platform to iPadOS and iOS, but maybe someone has a creative solution.
Thank you. I was aware of the possibility of editing (but I'd have had to look up where!).

Are additions stored in iCloud? Or do we have manually propagate to a new machine?
 
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Thank you. I was aware of the possibility of editing (but I'd have had to look up where!).

Are additions stored in iCloud? Or do we have manually propagate to a new machine?
No, it's a local dictionary as I mentioned. You could of course copy it to another Mac.
 
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Here's an article talking about that file: https://tidbits.com/2016/02/03/how-to-unlearn-misspellings-and-sync-your-user-dictionary-in-os-x/

It all seems very low-tech (unchanged holdover from 2002 or something?). Not only is it just a text file with one word per line, they also apparently need to be stored in pre-sorted order. I imagine if the iCloud machinery got involved, it would at least be a .plist file.
Thank you. That is pretty bad!

About as bad as I feared.
 
Sounds like an niche opportunity for an app that could merge, sort and sync dictionaries across all devices via iCloud.

No changes that I can see to Local Dictionary and the Spelling folder in Sonoma Beta 2.
 
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Sounds like an niche opportunity for an app that could merge, sort and sync dictionaries across all devices via iCloud.

No changes that I can see to Local Dictionary and the Spelling folder in Sonoma Beta 2.
Given the changes to allow words not to always be replaced (e.g. ducking), I had hoped that the whole issue might be being looked at again.

I agree, either a niche or a desirable update feature.

I'm quite a reasonable speller - and mistakes tend to be typos. But if you rely on the spelling checker(s) it must be very annoying.
 
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