You Can Easily Add Words to Your Mac’s Dictionary
In the Internet age, language evolves faster than your computer’s vocabulary. Even if you only speak English, new words like “rizz”, “girl boss” and “microtransaction” keep popping up . No matter how savvy you are with slang, these words can definitely ruin your typing experience on Mac.
Even if you turn off AutoCorrect , you’ll still have to put up with little red lines under words that your Mac doesn’t recognize. But you can get around this problem by adding words you regularly use to your Mac’s dictionary. This will prevent your computer from bothering you when you’re feeling too skibidi.
How to Add Words to Mac Dictionary
The next time your Mac tries to autocorrect or underline a word that you want to leave as is, select the offending word, right-click it , and select Learn Spelling . This will add the word to your Mac’s dictionary. This option will only appear if you select a word that is not in your computer’s dictionary. Once you ask Mac to learn the spelling, this word will stop bothering you. Please note that this option may not always appear in all applications, but if you paste text into any writing application, it will definitely appear.
This feature has been present in macOS for over a decade, but a post by Mastodon John Gruber recently highlighted another method for adding words to your Mac’s dictionary. To do this, open Finder and press Command-Shift-G . Now paste ~/Library/GroupContainers/ group.com.apple .AppleSpell/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary into the form and press Return . You will be taken to the dictionary folder.
If you’ve already added words to your dictionary using Learn Spelling, they’ll appear in a file in this folder. This file is called en if your Mac’s default language is English, but other languages may use a different file name. Open this file and add words one word at a time to quickly create your own dictionary. Be sure to save the file before closing it. Adding words manually is a bit buggy and doesn’t always help your Mac learn the correct spelling, so I recommend using the Learn Spelling option for best results.
This is great advice for everyone, but especially for multilingual people who use their Mac to send messages in different languages. In many countries where English is not the primary language, it is quite common to send bilingual messages that contain a few words in English and a few words in another language. If this is you, then you can use this feature to add common words from your language to your Mac’s dictionary and stop worrying about them.