Globally turn off spell checking on Mac OS X.

By Xjs.

I already posted (in my looong diary post) that I’d like to turn off spell checking globally on Mac OS X. Googling didn’t really help – I found links that explained how to disable the spell checker service. But when doing like they tell, several applications complained that they couldn’t contact the spell checker service (via a dialog box) which is even more annoying than the red lines under words. In fact, Camino prompted me like “could not contact spell checker [OK]” for EVERY WORD I wrote, which I found out when using a pastebin service ;-)

So, here’s my sweet solution. How it works: It tells the spell checker that it should check spelling, but for NO language. It works like deleting all the NSLanguages parameters in its Info.plist. If you know what you’re doing, you can edit /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist yourself (NSLanguages is an array in Services » Item 1 – or use my edited Info.plist, see paragraph below) – if not, I’ll assist you a little bit.


First, download my edited Info.plist. Then, open a Terminal window (Applications » Utilities » Terminal) and type the following:

sudo mv /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist.bak

Hit return and you will be prompted for your password. Don’t be confused of no characters appearing after the prompt, just type your password and hit return again. Paste the following into the terminal window now:

sudo cp

Insert a space and then drag the Info.plist you just downloaded on your terminal window. Type another space, then insert the following:

/System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist

Your line in the Terminal window should now look like this:

sudo cp /Users/YourUserName/Downloads/Info.plist /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Info.plist

(the string that appeared when you dragged the file onto the terminal window might look different) – Check if you didn’t forget a space, then hit return again. Eventually, you may be asked for your password again, but don’t worry if not, that’s all right, too.

Finally, type

sudo killall AppleSpell

and you’re done!

Hope somebody’s lucky with that,

Xjs.

Update: It appears like you should not have applications running that use AppleSpell.service while “patching” it – as Owen pointed out. So quit all apps that do spell checking before.

11 Responses to “Globally turn off spell checking on Mac OS X.”

  1. Thank you VERY much! :)

    Jasper said this on October 30th, 2008 at 12:46 am

  2. Spellcheckers are annoying for people who know how to spell (and those numbers are rapidly diminishing here in America). For now this appears to be a good hack although I would rather see a reliable solution that frees up system resources by eliminating the service altogether.

    Brad said this on November 2nd, 2008 at 7:21 pm

  3. Well, but as I wrote, programs keep complaining when they can’t connect to the spell checker service, e. g. Safari and Camino are completely unusable then.

    Xjs said this on November 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm

  4. Thank you so much for this. Since i’m norwegian and most of the time type in norwegian, this is particularly annoying since allmost all of the norwegian words get the red line underneath.

    I have been looking for a solution to this problem for a long time, so thanks a bunch!

    Magnus said this on November 11th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

  5. Hooray. Searching for such a tip for a long time. No annoying red lines any more. Thanx for sharing.

    mad said this on January 15th, 2009 at 10:19 am

  6. I just get “file not found”. please advise.

    Robert said this on January 24th, 2009 at 8:08 am

  7. And where do you get “file not found”? I can’t help you if you won’t tell me.

    Xjs said this on January 24th, 2009 at 1:40 pm

  8. I find that this solution did not work to permanently disable the spell checker. If, for instance, you follow this procedure while TextEdit is running, and then quit and restart TextEdit, you can spell check again. Here’s what I did instead (and it has the added advantage of being simpler):

    sudo mv /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service.disabled
    sudo killall AppleSpell

    Owen said this on January 26th, 2009 at 10:52 pm

  9. Okay, I seem to have forgotten to add that you should quit running apps talking with the spell checker service.

    Disabling doesn’t help, because for example Camino (and other apps) try to connect to the spell checker and give a nasty error message when it’s not reachable (as I pointed out in my post) – and that for every “wrongly spelled” word. For example paste a bunch of code into a pastebin using Camino when AppleSpell is disabled. ;-)

    Xjs said this on January 26th, 2009 at 10:55 pm

  10. great how-to. only reasonable one over the whole web. but somethings surely up with your edited info.plist-link..?

    himo said this on February 21st, 2009 at 2:20 am

  11. Right, thanks for the hint… when moving my blog, I totally forgot it.
    It’s fixed now. :-)

    Xjs said this on February 21st, 2009 at 7:34 am

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