Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Why does firefox keep highlighting English words as wrongly spelt?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by James

more options

I've installed the British English Dictionary and Language pack. They are confirmed as active in Add-on Manager. Using the latest version of Firefox at present. Version 61.0. Checking for updates from About finds no newer version.

Yet, still Firefox insists on trying to make everything American English. How can I stop it doing that?

Is the only way to completely remove it and start again from the beginning?

Windows 10.

I've installed the British English Dictionary and Language pack. They are confirmed as active in Add-on Manager. Using the latest version of Firefox at present. Version 61.0. Checking for updates from About finds no newer version. Yet, still Firefox insists on trying to make everything American English. How can I stop it doing that? Is the only way to completely remove it and start again from the beginning? Windows 10.

All Replies (3)

more options

Is the American spell checker also installed?

more options

FredMcD said

Is the American spell checker also installed?

Looking in Add-on Manager it shows English (GB) under Languages and British Dictionary under Dictionaries. I can't see anything that says American spellchecker anywhere.

So, I did a bit more digging and searched for "spellchecker" in about:config and found there is a setting called spellchecker.dictionary that was set to en-US. Changed that to en-GB.

Hopefully that will trigger the spellchecker to use the installed English (GB) language and dictionary.

Edit: Restarted Firefox and that has fixed it! Thanks for setting me on the right path. I thought it would be something obvious and not that hidden. Normally I don't like messing around with the internals of software. I hope others find this useful.

Modified by alowe

more options

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-use-firefox-spell-checker

You can have multiple dictionaries installed. The issue is you need to select which one you want the inline spellchecker to use at the time.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-use-firefox-spell-checker#w_switching-dictionaries