Use system spellchecker

[sindresorhus]

From: sindresorhus/caprine#14

All native apps on OS X gets spellchecking in text boxes (NSTextView) for free.

I know I could use webFrame.setSpellCheckProvider, but then I would have to hard-code a language, add boilerplate code, use a node module.

Why can't I just define that I want spellchecking as an option and have it use the system one?

[anaisbetts]

Neither Windows 7 or Linux have spellchecking built-in, you have to implement it yourself. Implementing a built-in API that only works on one platform yet feels like it should work everywhere seems...odd?

[sindresorhus]

OS X users are used to having spellchecking in text boxes by default. It would be very non-native not having that. If other OSes doesn't provide it built-in, users won't expect it there either. According to node-spellchecker there's a spellcheck API in Windows 8.

[zcbenz]

The blink engine doesn't use NSTextView, it just renders everything itself, so there is no way to use the system spellchecker.

[sindresorhus]

Ok, but Chrome has spellchecking cross-platform, so why not expose that?

[fregante]

On OSX I can use the system's spellchhecker just fine in Chrome, so somehow they have a way:

[anaisbetts]

@bfred-it Not 100% sure on this, but that is actually using a Google web service as the spellchecker, which is why Chrome has it everywhere

[sindresorhus]

@paulcbetts You can disable that in the Chrome settings and it still works.

[fregante]

@paulcbetts no that's the system's UI. This is Apple's TextEdit.app:

[zcbenz]

Chrome just uses OS X's spelling check API (or hunspell on other platforms) and then shows a custom context menu, you can implement the exact same thing with menu and node-spellchecker modules.

The "spelling and grammar" dialog, is also a system dialog, but we don't have a way to show it in Electron app yet, I have split the problem in following issues:

• Expose the "Spelling and Grammar" related APIs  #3211
• Expose the context-menu event in WebContents #3210

Chrome has worked hard to make things feel native, we can expose everything in Electron, but it needs some no-easy work.

[ylluminate]

This is a pretty important feature. Is it just too hard to implement for anyone / everyone right now?

[Mte90]

Any hope? this feature is blocking too many appliations based on electron

[davidmoore-io]

+1 on Mte90's comment. It's expected behaviour in OS X apps, and I know a whole load of electron apps (Rambox etc) are keen for this to work.

[kopurando]

moreover, native OS X apps can enable autocorrect, which works pretty well these days. Whatever based on Chrome, however, only spell checks. In fast-typing scenarios it is useless sometimes. And almost everything is in Chrome these days: chats, emails, office apps, coding etc... Electron just intensifies the situation.
This issue has been travelling around bug trackers for 4-5 years now, and still no solution? This sounds so backwards in 2017. Even dumbphones are way ahead of desktops on this matter!

[sferoze]

@kopurando I know, all I want is spellcheck to work in my electron app, and every few weeks I come back to this issue to see if I can get it to work and nothing... Most solutions are too complicated or too buggy to implement.

I wish there was just a boolean or something to set in electron to use native spellcheck...

Ahh... any luck on your side?

[NiklasBr]

Any news on this?

[wesleytodd]

Any update on this? I am hoping to use Beaker Browser as my primary browser, but the lack of a spell checker is the only blocking feature. I don't mean to add to the noise, but squeaky wheel something or other....

[tgy]

Shouldn't this issue be re-opened? Not having spell checking is extremely annoying indeed.

[MarshallOfSound]

This is implemented in Electron 8.

See #20692

[Syed-Umair]

@MarshallOfSound , I think it would be great if we could have documentation on how use this spellchecker for webviews.