By default, Google Chrome includes a built-in spell checker that actively scans every word you type into a web form, search bar, or text box, underlining unrecognised words with a jagged red line. While this is highly beneficial for writing emails or social media posts, it can be incredibly distracting for developers typing code snippets into web-based IDEs, or for users working within specialized internal web applications where highly technical acronyms are constantly (and incorrectly) flagged as typos.
This guide explains how to completely disable the integrated spell check engine in Google Chrome, stopping the browser from analyzing your keystrokes and removing the red squiggly underlines.
Disable Spell Check via Chrome Settings
Google has relocated the spell check controls in recent Chrome updates, moving them out of the standard typing menus and into the languages section.
- Launch Google Chrome.
- Click the three-dot menu icon located in the top-right corner of the browser window.
- Select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand navigation sidebar, click on Languages.
- Scroll down the page until you locate the section specifically labelled Spell check.
- Toggle the master switch next to Check for spelling errors when you type text on web pages to the Off position.
Once you toggle this switch, Chrome immediately stops analyzing your text input. Any existing red squiggly lines on your current open tabs should instantly disappear without requiring a browser restart.
Disable Enhanced Spell Check (Privacy Warning)
If you were using Chrome’s “Enhanced Spell Check” feature, your browser was actually transmitting everything you typed to Google’s cloud servers for advanced grammatical analysis. Disabling the master spell check switch (as outlined above) automatically disables the Enhanced feature as well.
However, if you want to keep basic local spell checking but absolutely must stop your keystrokes from being sent to Google’s servers for privacy reasons, follow the same steps above, but instead of turning the master switch off, simply change the radial button selection from Enhanced spell check to Basic spell check.