I am finding that on macOS 12.4, occasionally the default spellchecker will flag false positives for certain words. I’ve just updated to v0.15.9, and tried disabling community plug-ins etc in case that was somehow relevant.
For example, in the following sentence, the word ‘off’ is marked as mis-spelled:
Turning the iPad off & on again fixed it.
In this example, changing the ‘&’ for the word ‘and’ causes the error to go away.
Turning the iPad off and on again fixed it.
This is not a general pattern though (it’s not that ‘any word before an & is flagged’) - it seems that certain arbitrary word combinations trigger it sometimes, and at least in this specific case, this triggering is persisting with the same sentence in the context of different notes, whether it’s copied and pasted or re-typed (I have memories of tracking down strange behaviour elsewhere in the past where invisible characters have somehow been inserted into seemingly identical strings).
Indeed, changing almost any of the surrounding words seems to effect it; none of the following has the error:
Turning it off & on again fixed it.
Turning the iPhone off & on again fixed it.
I understand that Obsidian is using the system spellchecker. I don’t know quite how that integration works or at what point this bug introduces itself, but have at least checked that a similar false-positive is not triggered with the same sentence in Pages on the same machine, for instance.
I can’t remember if I’ve seen this type of bug manifest on non-mac devices, but this specific example is not reproduce-able on my Windows desktop or my old MacBook running Big Sur (I made sure to also update Obsidian to v0.15.9 there as well). I can only specifically remember noticing it on this new (M1 Pro MBP) laptop.
I am now noticing that I also get similar behaviour in this editor in Safari. I’m now trying to establish whether the same is also true for other browser-based editors (I suppose it could still be that shared Obsidian code used here is responsible, but this seems to point at it being more of a macOS bug).
StackEdit, which is using the browser’s spellchecker I think, is not triggering false positives with my test sentence.
Some more examples of things that do cause the error (always the word ‘off’):
The iPad off & on again.
Any iPad off & on again.
and some that don’t:
The iPad off & on again. //error
Word iPad off & on again.
Actually, I’m finding that the behaviour of this forum software vs the Obsidian app is slightly different in some cases, but it’s probably not worth listing too much, unless someone finds it useful to help diagnose.
Please re-read my bug report, I’ve made efforts to cross-check against other things also using the Apple spellchecker. Not that this means it isn’t an Apple bug, and it should be reported there, but it does seem there’s something somewhat peculiar to the Obsidian integration.
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Steps to reproduce
It happens randomly. Words will show in notes as red underlined indicating misspelled but they are in fact correct.
Expected result
Words in the dictionary or common words and spelled correctly should not be underlined red.
Actual result
Mix of things that are underlined some I expected some not.
Environment
Operating system: Mac Os x Catalina 10.15.7
Debug info:SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v0.15.6
Installer version: v0.14.2
Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 19.6.0: Mon Apr 18 21:50:40 PDT 2022; root:xnu-6153.141.62~1/RELEASE_X86_64 19.6.0
Login status: logged in
Catalyst license: supporter
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: off
Legacy editor: off
Base theme: light
Community theme: Oogie
Snippets enabled: 2
Safe mode: on
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Custom theme: for cosmetic issues, please first try updating your theme to latest. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community theme and snippets.
Here is a normal word showing the problem:
and here is a case where I’d expect all to be considered misspelled but they aren’t
If you copy this text in an apple app or in chrome, is it misspelled?
Lower left corner click on ? then click on Open Sandbox vault. see if ti happens there.
You can upload the file anywhere you want and post a link here.
Copied into Textedit and still shows underlined red.
I copied the text into a file in the sandbox but it’s not showing underlined.
Tried to drag the file onto the sandbox vault to upload it unchanged and nothing happens.
Made a duplicte of the file and founc the sandbox vault and added it and then restarted Onsidian and does notshow underlined red but my copy in my vault still does.
updates:Apple spellcheck can look at grammar. Most apps have it as spelling and grammar under the Edit menu where you can set one or both options. However in Obsidian it is not implemented that way and in the Obsidian settings under Editor under spellcheck the only option is on or off. I’d like to try turning grammar off and seeing if that helps but I can’t do so in Obsidian. I had assumed that since it only said spellcheck that only that was enabled in Obsidian.
That’s interesting, TextEdit does indeed flag it in the same way - as mentioned, I’d tried Pages and another browser-based MD editor that I believed to be using essentially the same system, and they both didn’t.
