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Disable (some) automatic spell-checking to reduce CPU load and improve battery life

Introduction

Over recent years, automatic spell-checking has been implemented on many levels, both in the operating system and in many common applications. While spell-checking has its use when authoring e-mails or important documents, overzealous real-time spell-checking and auto-correction has a few side effects:

  • It may cause quite surprisingly high CPU load during typing, leading to higher fan noise and lower battery life.
  • If the system load is already pretty high from other tasks, it may cause typing to feel sluggish because the typed characters take longer to appear on the screen.
  • When commonly writing in multiple languages at the same time (e.g., English and native language side-by-side), the automatic system will often wrongfully flag spelling and replace correctly written words with similar yet incorrect words from the currently assumed (incorrect) language.
  • Spell-checking is implemented to various degrees both system-wide and per-app, resulting in an overlap of multiple spell-checking systems working at the same time, leading to even more unneccessary CPU activity.

Due to these side-effects, we would advise to generally disable system-wide spell-checking (in Windows Settings) and to consider if you'd also like to disable it in some of the more fast and loose productivity applications such as real-time messaging apps.

There is also an open debate on what effect automatic spell-checking may have on the maintenance of one's own spelling and typing skills, but that discussion is a wee bit beyond the scope of this article.

This article will showcase some of the areas and applications where real-time spell-checking can be disabled.

System-wide spell-checking in Windows Settings

The system-wide spell-checking implemented in Windows is often used on top of the in-app spell-checking systems, leading in many cases to a redundant double-check, increasing system load even more. It is also applied to even the most simple text input applets such as notepad.exe.

Follow these steps to disable it:

  • Search “Typing” in Start Menu or manually go to “Settings” → “Devices” → “Typing”.
  • Potentially disable each and all options in this menu (see screenshot).
  • Pay special attention to "Autocorrect misspelled words", "Highlight misspelled words" and the settings further down under "Hardware keyboard".

Microsoft Edge

  • Open "Settings"and go to "Languages"
  • Scroll down to the middle and find "Use writing assistance"
  • "Basic" is enabled by default. You can disable it by clicking on the blue toggle in the top-right corner of this "writing assistance" section (see screenshot).

Google Chrome

  • Click on the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and select "Settings".
  • Scroll down and click on "Languages".
  • Under "Spell check" you can disable spell checking for individual languages or disable it all-together (see screenshot).

Keep in mind: if you only disable for certain languages, Google Chrome will still attempt to guess in which language you are currently typing, leading to CPU usage and potentially incorrect detection.

Mozilla Firefox

  • Click on the three-line menu ("chamburger menu") in the top-right corner and select "Settings".
  • In the "General" tab, scroll down to "Language".
  • Uncheck the box for "Check your spelling as you type" (see screenshot).

Microsoft Teams

  • Click on the three dots next to the search bar at the top of the window
  • Click on "Settings"
  • In the "Genera" tab, scroll down to "Language"
  • Uncheck the box "Enable spell check (requires restarting Teams)" (see screenshot).
  • While you are here, you may also want to disable "show suggested replies in chat".

Signal for Desktop

  • Click on "File" and select "Preferences".
  • On the left, find the "Chat" tab.
  • Unselect the checkbox "Spell check text entered in message composition box" (see screenshot).
  • Restart Signal.

Skype

Skype has its own internal spell-checker which, in the past, could be disabled under “Settings” → “Messaging” → “Automatically correct spelling”. In newer versions, however, this setting has disappeared, but the spellchecker continues to do its merry business. A common tip to disable spell-checking via Regedit does not seem to work as indicated in this thread. Thus, we currently see no option to disable automatic spell-checking and autocorrection in Skype.

Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)

Disabling automatic spell-checking in Microsoft Office may not be preferable to every user, that's why we placed this tip down at the bottom of this list. Once automatic spell-checking is disabled, you have to manually open the "Spelling and Grammar" function in the "Review" section of the ribbon menu. Only then will you see the red underline under incorrectly spelled words.

  • Open the application (e.g., Microsoft Word).
  • Click on “File” → “Options”.
  • In the "Options" window, select the option category "Proofing".
  • Under "When correcting spelling and grammar in Word" uncheck the boxes for spelling and grammar (see screenshot).

Each application of Microsoft Office have their own, indepent settings for spell-checking. So, for example, you can disable automatic spell-checking in Excel and PowerPoint, while still keeping it enabled in Microsoft Word.

PRO TIP: Press F7 to manually check spelling and grammar in Microsoft Office. To only check a certain paragraph, select any amount of text first before you press F7.

Summary

If you disable real-time spell-checking in some of these apps, you should notice lower CPU usage when typing, which in turn may lead to lower fan activity and longer battery life. Keep in mind that these settings may be subject to change as software updates are released, so it's always a good idea to occasionally re-check the various settings of your most commonly used productivity apps for any new features and customizations.