Windows 10: Windows Spellchecker in Edge, Chrome, and other Chromium browsers

Microsoft's decision to switch to Chromium as the source for the company's Edge browser has injected even more development resources into the project.

One of the latest commits by Microsoft engineers introduces support for the Windows Spellchecker in Chromium.

Any changes to the classic version of Microsoft Edge benefited that browser only previously. With Microsoft now focusing its energy on Chromium, any improvements made to Chromium benefit all other Chromium-based browsers as a consequence.

In other words: the Windows Spellchecker will be available as an option in the new Microsoft Edge, in Google Chrome, and in other Chromium-based browsers such as Vivaldi, Opera, or Brave provided that the companies behind these browsers don't block the flag in their browsers.

Google does not seem to have any objections to that as it is already possible to flip the default spellchecker of the Chrome browser to the Windows Spellchecker.



There is one caveat, however. Since we are talking about the spellchecker of the Windows operating system, the option to switch to it is only available on Windows.

Also, the feature is currently only available in development versions of some browsers, e.g. Chrome Canary, and not in stable versions (there is not even a stable Edge based on Chromium out there). The new option is not available in any Microsoft Edge versions right now.

So, to enable it right now, here is what you need to do:

1. Load chrome://flags in the browser's address bar. Note that other browsers may use a different protocol for internal pages. Microsoft Edge uses edge://flags, and the same may be true for other Chromium-based browsers.
2. Search for spellchecker.
3. The result "Use the Windows OS spellchecker" should be returned.
4. Set the flag to Enabled.
5. Restart the browser.

Enabled means that the browser will use the spellchecker of the Windows operating system from that moment on and not the default Chromium spellchecker. Windows Latest, the site that discovered the new option, notes that Chromium uses Hunspell by default. Hunspell is used by a wide variety of projects including LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Google Chrome, Mac OS X, Opera, and others.

The commit on the Chromium website offers the following insight into the change:

This CL aims to implement windows spellchecker integration in Chromium project, so that user can switch to use windows spellchecker or hunspell spellchecker at run time. We need to implement platform agnostic interfaces to integrate windows spellchecker into Chromium. We also need to refactor some code to enable runtime switch between Windows spellchecker and hunspell spellchecker.
​

It may be difficult to spot the change right away as you'd need to have some data at hand for comparison. One example would be a word that the default spellchecker does not suggest to correct while the Windows spellchecker does.

Closing Words


Microsoft adding features to Chromium is good news for any user who uses a Chromium-based browser; Mozilla on the other hand has even tougher competition to deal with as a consequence.

Now You: do you make use of a spellchecker in your browser of choice?

Ghacks needs you. You can find out how to support us here (https://www.ghacks.net/support/) or support the site directly by becoming a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/ghacks)). Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Windows Spellchecker in Edge, Chrome, and other Chromium browsers appeared first on gHacks Technology News.

read more...

 

Chromium as default browser windows 10

Why can't I select Chromium (not Chrome) as my default browser in windows 10? I use Chromium almost exclusively. It works perfectly except that I can not make it the default browser. The settings menu for default apps does not list Chromium among the
browser options.

 

Chromium as default browser windows 10

I don't have chromium (or chrome) installed so I may not be able to help.

try changing from within chromium

• Click on the Wrench icon and select Options
• In the Basics tab, click on Make Chromium my default browser in the
  Default browser section.

 

do you run chromium based browser?

no. i can't think of a reason to use a chromium based browser other than chrome.