Spellcheck not working in Monterey 12.1

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mlondon Author

Level 1

19 points

Spellcheck not working in Monterey 12.1

Spellcheck has stopped working in all my apps since upgrading to 12.1

Misspelled words are NOT underlined in red.

I have checked to make sure Preferences>Keyboard>Text>Correct Spelling Automatically is checked.

And have checked to make sure that Edit>Spelling&Grammar>Check Spelling While Typing is checked within each app.

I have run Cocktail for macOS, cleared caches, restarted, etc.

Oddly, for some reason, some apps are not showing the checkmark to the right of "Check Spelling While Typing, but others do. In both cases, the command does not work.

I AM able to use Show Spelling & Grammer, and Check Document Now in all apps.

Grateful for any suggestions.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Dec 27, 2021 6:21 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Dec 28, 2021 12:59 AM in response to mlondon

Did you have any grammar of similar apps installed?

Try booting to Safe Mode. That boot up takes minutes and clears caches and other things that may resolve your problem.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

A lot of times just boot to Safe Mode followed by normal boot resolves problems.

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Answer 2

PRP_53

Level 10

84,643 points

Jan 5, 2022 2:36 AM in response to mlondon

Since the issue is presented while booting into Safe Mode - this appears to be System Wide issue. That os something specific to the user Admin Account.

Suggestion to further trouble shoot the issue Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac. Then log out of Admin Account and into the newly created account and Test if the issue is presented.

Should the issue still be there in the test account - it would be reasonable to conclude the problem is truly System Wide.

Any Third Party Applications that will interfere with the normal operation of the OS, alter, modify, remove or delete or attempt to do so is an invitation for disaster and may require a Reinstallation of the OS.

One may need to consider a Reinstallation via Recovery Mode. This should only reinstall any corrupted or missing elements of the OS without touching any Preferences, Setting, Applications and Personal Files.

It is further suggested to perform a Time Machine Backup before attempting the above suggestion..

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Answer 3

PRP_53

Level 10

84,643 points

Dec 28, 2021 4:30 AM in response to mlondon

System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Check " Correct spelling automatically "

Cocktail - is it really required to use it ? Unless one is very very careful - it could be root cause of the above mentioned issue.

Any Third Party Applications that will interfere with the normal operation of the OS, alter, modify, remove or delete or attempt to do so is an invitation for disaster and may require a Reinstallation of the OS.

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Answer 4

mlondon Author

Level 1

19 points

Jan 4, 2022 6:40 PM in response to lllaass

lllaass wrote:

Did you have any grammar of similar apps installed?

Try booting to Safe Mode.

I had installed Grammarly, but uninstalled it. Things were working fine before Grammarly, so I'm thinking it may have been the culprit, but I cant figure out what it may have broken. Any ideas?

Booting in Safe mode did not resolve the problem.

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Answer 5

mlondon Author

Level 1

19 points

Jan 4, 2022 6:44 PM in response to PRP_53

System Preferences >> Keyboard >> Check " Correct spelling automatically "

Yes, as I wrote previously, this is Checked. And I tried unchecking and rechecking which did not help.

(As for Cocktail, I've been using it (carefully) for more than a decade without problems, and has been a life-saver at times)

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Answer 6

Feb 21, 2022 10:27 PM in response to ismohapatra

I had the same problem. (Macbook Air M1, Monterey 12.2.1)

The spellcheck was not working after I uninstalled Grammarly.

That solved the problem for me https://mjtsai.com/blog/2021/12/22/grammarly-disables-spell-checking-globally/

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Answer 7

Feb 23, 2022 5:52 PM in response to christos196

This is the right answer. Grammarly was the problem. Uninstalling doesn't fix it. You need to re-enable spellchecking system wide with

defaults write -g NSAllowContinuousSpellChecking -bool true

Huge thanks to christos196 and Leeabe51

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Answer 8

txs1991

Level 1

8 points

Jan 18, 2022 1:57 AM in response to PRP_53

I am having the same exact issue as you are @mlondon. Grammerly seems to be the culprit.

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Answer 9

Jan 26, 2022 11:43 AM in response to mlondon

I also have the exact same issue. I had grammerly on Big Sur too and never faced any problems. But with Monterey 12.1 spell check seems to go for a toss. Actively awating an OS upgrade from Apple.

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