Microsoft Edge 83: spellchecking uses Windows Spellcheck

Martin Brinkmann
May 29, 2020
Internet, Microsoft Edge
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7

Microsoft released Microsoft Edge 83, a new stable version of the company's Chrome web browser, recently to the public. One of the changes of the release switched spell checking from the default Chromium-based spellchecker to Windows Spellcheck.

Microsoft Edge 83 or higher on Windows 8.1 or higher (including Windows 10), uses the Windows spellchecker and not the Chromium-based spellchecker anymore. Nothing changes for Microsoft Edge for other platforms, e.g. Windows 7 or Mac.

The change is active right after installation or upgrade to the new version; users don't have to configure settings in Edge to make use of the new spellchecker.

Microsoft notes that Windows Spellcheck offers several advantages over the default spellchecker of Chromium-based browsers such as Google Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave, or Opera.

Previously, on Windows, Microsoft Edge and other Chromium browsers used open-source proofing tools for spell checking. Moving to Windows Spellcheck has a number of benefits, including support for additional languages and dialects, a shared custom dictionary, and better support for URLs, acronyms, and email addresses.

Spellchecking support is provided for languages that are installed on the system. Users who require spellchecking support for multiple languages need to install these on the Windows system to make use of Windows Spellcheck functionality. Spellchecking reverts to the Chromium-based spellchecker for any language that is not installed on the system.

Windows users may install languages in the Settings application under Time & Language > Language. A click on "add a preferred language" to install another language pack on the device; this needs to be repeated for every language if spellchecking should use Windows Spellcheck on the device.

windows 10 add language

Microsoft Edge users may control spellchecking functionality in the browser directly. Here is how that is done:

  1. Load edge://settings/languages in the browser's address bar. Microsoft Edge lists preferred languages and spell checking controls on the page.
  2. Toggle spellchecking functionality under "check spelling" on the page to turn it on (blue toggle) or off (white toggle) individually.

microsoft edge spellchecking settings

One of the main advantages of using Windows Spellcheck over the open source Hunspell that Chromium uses is that you may notice that fewer items are highlighted as misspelled; this includes email addresses, URLs, and acronyms, many of which are highlighted by Hunspell while they are not highlighted by Windows Spellcheck.

Microsoft notes that the feature was developed as a collaboration between Microsoft and Google engineers who work on the Chromium project. Ultimate, Windows Spellcheck functionality will become available for all Chromium-based browsers who are run on Windows 8.1 or newer versions of Windows.

You may check the experimental flag chrome://flags/#win-use-native-spellchecker to find out if a Chromium-based browser supports the native spellchecker on Windows already.

Now You: Do you use the spellchecker in your browser?

Summary
Microsoft Edge 83: spellchecking uses Windows Spellcheck
Article Name
Microsoft Edge 83: spellchecking uses Windows Spellcheck
Description
Microsoft Edge 83 and other Chromium-based web browsers may use Windows Spellcheck on Windows for spellchecking now. Find out how!
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

  10. Anonymous said on September 28, 2023 at 8:19 am
    Reply

    When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?

  11. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 9:36 am
    Reply

    Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.

    I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.

    1. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 11:01 am
      Reply

      Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  12. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 10:48 am
    Reply

    Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  13. Mystique said on September 28, 2023 at 12:13 pm
    Reply

    Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
    Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.

  14. justputthispostanywhere said on September 29, 2023 at 3:59 am
    Reply

    I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.

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