How to Turn Off Autocorrect on Mac (and Predictive Text)

How to turn off autocorrect on a Mac (every app)

These steps work on macOS Sonoma 14 and later, including macOS 27 Golden Gate, and match Apple’s own instructions:

1. Choose Apple menu › System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar. You may need to scroll down.
2. Under Text Input, click Edit.
3. Switch off Correct spelling automatically.
4. Click Done.

Your Mac still underlines misspelled words in red; it just stops changing them for you. The underlines come from spell check, which is a separate feature with its own switches (more on that below).

Note: Autocorrect got a big update in macOS Sonoma, when Apple rebuilt it on an on-device transformer language model and made corrections easier to undo (see below).

How to turn off autocorrect in one app (Messages, Notes, Mail)

Want autocorrect in Notes but not in Messages? You can switch it off for one app at a time:

1. Open the app, such as Messages, Notes, or Mail, and click in a text field.
2. Choose Edit › Spelling and Grammar.
3. Click Correct Spelling Automatically to remove its checkmark. No checkmark means it’s off in that app.

Other apps keep following your system setting. If you can’t find the option, check the app’s own settings: apps like Word and Outlook manage autocorrect themselves (see below).

How to turn off predictive text on a Mac

The gray words that appear ahead of your cursor are inline predictions, which arrived in macOS Sonoma alongside the new autocorrect. Press Space to accept one, or keep typing to ignore it. To stop them appearing:

1. Open System Settings › Keyboard.
2. Under Text Input, click Edit.
3. Switch off Show inline predictive text, then click Done.

Not every language supports inline predictions, so if you write in several, you may only see them in some.

Other automatic changes you can switch off

The same Text Input › Edit panel holds a few more settings that change what you type. Here’s what each one does (Apple covers the smart quotes and double-space options in its guide to replacing text and punctuation on Mac):

Tip: Many apps also have an Edit › Substitutions menu, where you can switch Smart Quotes and Smart Dashes off in just that app.

How to turn off autocorrect in Word, Outlook, and Slack

Microsoft Word and Outlook have autocorrect settings of their own, separate from your Mac’s. If words still change after you’ve switched off the Mac setting, look here.

Microsoft Word

1. On the Word menu, choose Preferences, then AutoCorrect. (If your Word menu shows Settings instead, use that.)
2. Clear Replace text as you type.

Word’s red underlines are a separate setting again: Word › Preferences › Spelling & Grammar, where you can clear “Check spelling as you type” and “Check grammar as you type”. Microsoft’s AutoCorrect help for Word has the details.

Outlook

1. On the Outlook menu, choose Settings, then Spelling & Typing.
2. Switch off Correct Spelling Automatically. Smart quotes, smart dashes, and text replacement have their own switches on the same page.

In legacy Outlook for Mac, it’s Outlook › Settings › AutoCorrect, where you clear Replace text as you type.

Slack

Slack doesn’t document an autocorrect switch of its own. Its desktop app (version 4.5.0 and later) uses the macOS spell checker, and you can hide its spelling underlines in Preferences › Language & region by clearing Enable spellcheck on your messages.

How to undo an autocorrection without turning it off

If autocorrect is mostly helpful, you can keep it on and just catch the odd bad change:

• Before it happens: when a suggestion appears as you type, press Esc to ignore it and keep typing.
• Right after it happens: a corrected word gets a brief underline. Put the insertion point just after the word and choose your original spelling from the suggestions.
• Later on: Control-click the corrected word and choose Change Back to restore what you typed.
• In most apps: ⌘Z (Undo) usually reverses a correction you’ve just seen happen.

Autocorrect vs spell check vs predictive text vs proofreading

These features are easy to mix up, and each one is switched off in a different place:

Turning off autocorrect doesn’t stop the red underlines. For the checking side, including how to add words to the dictionary and change the spelling language, see how to spell check on a Mac.

The last row is new. On macOS 27, Apple Intelligence “automatically proofreads for users as they type across the system”, Apple says, on Macs with M1 or later. Our guide to Writing Tools and proofreading on Mac covers how it works and what it needs.

Autocorrect keeps changing a word? Teach it the word

If autocorrect keeps “fixing” the same name or term, switching the whole feature off is overkill. Add the word to your Mac’s dictionary instead:

1. Type the word the way you want it. If autocorrect changes it, Control-click it and choose Change Back.
2. If the word now has a red underline, Control-click it and choose Learn Spelling.

Learned words are no longer flagged as misspellings in any document, and a word your Mac treats as misspelled is usually what triggers a correction. Taught it something wrong? Control-click the word and choose Unlearn Spelling.

A middle ground: fix typos only when you ask

Some people turn autocorrect off, then miss having typos caught. You can write freely and check when you’re done instead: run Edit › Spelling and Grammar › Check Document Now, or on a Mac with Apple Intelligence, select the text and choose Proofread in Writing Tools. If you want help that works the same way in every app, our guide on choosing a grammar checker for Mac covers what to look for.

In MacWriteBuddy: Nothing changes while you type. MacWriteBuddy only touches text when you select it and press ⌃⌥G, and it shows a preview of every change before anything is replaced. Fixing spelling and grammar is free, it works in any app, and it can run on a model on your own Mac. See how the preview works.