macOS spellcheck is beyond pathetic

[ixxx69]

I'm on Big Sur, but this has been happening for several macOS version now - macOS's native spell check (and dictionary lookup) is beyond the pale of awfulness. How is this possible in 2021, from Apple no less? Spellcheck worked quite well a decade ago.

I'll get the red squiggly line under a misspelled word, and I right-click to see suggestions, and get "No guesses found". I try spelling it differently. No guesses found. I know I'm close. Sometimes I'm just a couple letters off. I'll try half a dozen different combinations of phonetic spellings.

I go to google, type the first few letters of the word and it's already correctly guessing what word I'm after. I can intentionally mangle the spelling and it still figures it out. Even Microsoft Windows spellcheck is far superior.

And equally frustrating is when macOS guesses the correct spelling of the word, but then will not replace the misspelled word with the correct spelling no matter how many times I click on it. The red squiggly line goes away, but the word is still misspelled. If the red squiggly line reappears a moment later, it still can't fix the word. I end up constantly going to google to find the spelling of words and copy and pasting. It's a PITA.

This is happening in the likes of Mail, Messages, Safari, etc., so can't blame it on third-party software.

Has anyone found a fix? Is there a better dictionary available for purchase (American English) that would work better, or is this just a bug in macOS that Apple has no intention of ever fixing?

 

[0128672]

Could you give us a few examples? It would be helpful to try to reproduce the behavior you're describing.

 

[SpeQ]

Could you give us a few examples? It would be helpful to try to reproduce the behavior you're describing.

I can relate to OP's complaint. I've had similar issues, but not often and I don't save examples when I run across them.

I'm always surprised when it fails, because the grammar check, which must be much more memory-intensive, is pretty good.

Search engines are obviously more forgiving with spelling than Apple's dictionary. Here are some words common in fishing that Apple will red-line. If I enter a hyphen in the appropriate location and then remove it, the red-line will (sometimes) go away.

swimbait
baitcaster
baitshop
crankbait
chatterbait
baitfish

"camo" is listed with Merriam Webster.

"there" is sometimes red-lined when the OS incorrectly suspects it should be "their" or "they're".

I have added "ain’t" to my dictionary, but I think it is normally red-lined.

You can add to your dictionary by going to (user)/Library/Spelling. Perhaps there are less formal dictionaries available that you can place there. I don't know how you would find them though.

In trying to find some examples, I saved some big Wikipedia articles as text, opened in Preview, and found that spellcheck only worked on the first part of the document. I don't know if that's a bug, or if it plays into the fact that the function is designed to work as you type and only checks certain portions of the document. I can go to the bottom of the document and type gibberish and it does not get red-lined.

 

[poked]

Yeah, it also sucks on the iOS apps I use, like Notes. It’s absolutely frustrating to have it mis-correct (I typed mis just now and it switched it to MKZ. Thanks, Apple! 🙄). I’m honestly not sure what information they’re using to generate the autocorrects but I’ve just learned to Google a word I don’t know how to spell and cross my fingers my iPhone/boyfriends laptop shut up once I hit “add to dictionary. Could it be that the dictionary simply hasn’t been updated since it came out and isn’t connecting to the Internet to get its answers?

 

[mikeoertli]

I'm on Big Sur, but this has been happening for several macOS version now - macOS's native spell check (and dictionary lookup) is beyond the pale of awfulness. How is this possible in 2021, from Apple no less? Spellcheck worked quite well a decade ago.

I'll get the red squiggly line under a misspelled word, and I right-click to see suggestions, and get "No guesses found". I try spelling it differently. No guesses found. I know I'm close. Sometimes I'm just a couple letters off. I'll try half a dozen different combinations of phonetic spellings.

I go to google, type the first few letters of the word and it's already correctly guessing what word I'm after. I can intentionally mangle the spelling and it still figures it out. Even Microsoft Windows spellcheck is far superior.

And equally frustrating is when macOS guesses the correct spelling of the word, but then will not replace the misspelled word with the correct spelling no matter how many times I click on it. The red squiggly line goes away, but the word is still misspelled. If the red squiggly line reappears a moment later, it still can't fix the word. I end up constantly going to google to find the spelling of words and copy and pasting. It's a PITA.

This is happening in the likes of Mail, Messages, Safari, etc., so can't blame it on third-party software.

Has anyone found a fix? Is there a better dictionary available for purchase (American English) that would work better, or is this just a bug in macOS that Apple has no intention of ever fixing?

Did you ever find anything to help @ixxx69? I had been looking at importing additional dictionaries at one point, but I don't think that's the issue. It's more a failure of the "did you mean?" type of logic than a shortcoming of the dictionary content (I think)...

 

[ixxx69]

Correct, this isn't about a lack of words in the dictionary itself. These are common english language words that are in any standard english language dictionary.

I've realized there are two separate issues...

1. The Messages app often loses ability to provide any suggestions for misspelled words. Words that are in the Apple dictionary. Sometimes even if wrong by just a single letter or two.

2. In general, even when Apple spell check is able to provide suggestions, it too often just isn't very good at making relevant suggestions for the word you're trying to spell.

 

[Tigloki]

I have a habit (years in the making) of getting the first two letters of a word capitalized, not just the first. Most recently was THis. I have a Mac for Work, Windows 11 for school, and various Linux boxen cavorting around the place. EVERYTHING but the Mac says, "THis isn't a word, did you mean this?" The Mac knows it's wrong, but cannot correct it? But the double caps is not the only issue. Just the most annoying because of the dozens of times I am duped into right-clicking the squiggly red line just see my MacBook make the Confused Scooby Noise every time. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Apple? Why is this so easy for everyone else? IT's like working with a spell checker written as an extra credit project by a junior high school student!

"...beyond pathetic" might not be a scathing enough indictment.

Strangely, the spell check while writing this post has been on point - I credit Chrome for that though.

 

[SpeQ]

The Mac knows it's wrong, but cannot correct it?

It works for me in 12.2. In TextEdit, Preview>Edit>Spelling and Grammar>Correct Spelling Automatically. Or in TextEdit: Preferences>Correct Spelling Automatically. "THis" is changed to "This".

Maybe the problem is the application you are working in and not the OS in this case?

IT's like

Strangely, the spell check while writing this post has been on point - I credit Chrome for that though.

Maybe Chrome is the problem.