How to Build a Personal Dictionary in Charm

Building a personal dictionary in Charm means adding your frequently used proper nouns, technical terms, and brand names so they are never flagged as errors. Right-click any incorrectly flagged word and select Learn Spelling to add it permanently to your macOS personal dictionary. Charm and every other native Mac app will recognise it from that point on. Users who add 25 or more words experience 40% fewer false corrections.

How to add words to your personal dictionary

Charm uses macOS's built-in personal dictionary, which means any word you teach Charm is automatically shared across every native Mac app. The process is straightforward and takes only a few seconds per word.

Here is the step-by-step method:

1. While writing in any app, notice a word that Charm or macOS autocorrect has incorrectly flagged.
2. Right-click the highlighted word to open the context menu.
3. Select Learn Spelling from the menu options.
4. The word is now added permanently to your macOS personal dictionary. It will never be flagged again.

That is all there is to it. You do not need to open any settings panel or restart Charm. The change takes effect immediately.

Learn Spelling vs Ignore Spelling: what is the difference?

The context menu shows two similar-sounding options, and the distinction matters.

Learn Spelling adds the word permanently to your macOS personal dictionary. Every native Mac app, including Charm, will treat it as a correctly spelled word from that moment on. This is what you want for terms you use regularly.

Ignore Spelling suppresses the flag only for the current session or document. Close the document, open a new one, or restart the app, and the word will be flagged again. Use Ignore Spelling when you have typed an unusual word once and do not expect to use it again.

For anything in your regular vocabulary, always choose Learn Spelling.

What words to add first

The highest-value words to add are those that appear most frequently in your writing and keep getting flagged incorrectly. Focus on four categories.

Proper nouns. Your own name, the names of colleagues, clients, and your company. These will appear hundreds of times in emails and documents. Adding them immediately eliminates a huge source of false corrections.

Technical terms specific to your field. Every profession has vocabulary that standard dictionaries do not include. A software developer might add "async", "useState", and "refactoring". A cardiologist might add "tachycardia" and "anticoagulant". A novelist might add character names like "Alistair" or "Sorcha" that appear throughout their manuscript.

Brand names and product names. Brand stylizations are a common source of false flags. Names like "iPhone", "iPad", and "macOS" use unconventional capitalisation that can trip up spell checkers. Company names, product lines, and software names all belong here.

Acronyms and initialisms your field uses. If you write "API", "SaaS", "HIPAA", or "QoL" regularly, add them. Standard dictionaries often lack industry-specific abbreviations.

Start by adding the 20 to 30 terms that generate the most false corrections in your day-to-day writing. After that, add words as you encounter them. Within a week, the vast majority of interruptions from incorrect flags should disappear.

How the personal dictionary works across apps

macOS maintains a single personal dictionary file that is shared across all native Mac applications. When you add a word via Charm, it is added to this shared dictionary. Mail, Notes, Pages, Slack, Messages, Xcode, and every other native Mac app will immediately recognise the word as correct.

This is a meaningful benefit: you configure your vocabulary once and the improvement propagates everywhere. You are not teaching Charm in isolation. You are teaching your entire Mac.

Charm also builds its own pattern model separately. Through its Oracle feature, Charm observes word frequency and context across your writing over time. Words you use repeatedly become better predicted, and Charm's autocomplete suggestions become more personalised to how you write. This layer of learning sits on top of the shared dictionary and adds a second, richer source of personalisation.

The personal dictionary file lives at ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary. It is a plain text file with one word per line. You can open it in any text editor to view or edit its contents directly.

Syncing and backing up your personal dictionary

The macOS personal dictionary does not sync via iCloud automatically. Unlike Text Replacements, which sync across your Apple devices through iCloud, the personal dictionary stays local to the Mac where you built it. If you have two Macs, each maintains its own separate dictionary until you manually synchronise them.

To copy your personal dictionary to another Mac:

1. On your source Mac, navigate to ~/Library/Spelling/ in Finder (use Go > Go to Folder in the menu bar).
2. Copy the LocalDictionary file.
3. On the destination Mac, navigate to the same folder and replace the existing file.

To keep the dictionary in sync going forward, you can store the file inside a folder that is synced by Dropbox, iCloud Drive, or another service, then create a symlink from ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary pointing to it. This keeps a single canonical dictionary file shared across all your Macs automatically.

Backing up the file is also worthwhile before a macOS reinstall or machine migration. It is a small file, but rebuilding 200 learned words from scratch is tedious. Add it to your backup checklist alongside Text Replacements and app preferences.

Frequently asked questions

How do I add a word to the dictionary in Charm?

Right-click any word that Charm or macOS autocorrect has incorrectly flagged, then select Learn Spelling from the context menu. The word is added permanently to the macOS personal dictionary and will never be flagged again in Charm or any other native Mac app.

What is the difference between Learn Spelling and Ignore Spelling?

Learn Spelling adds the word permanently to your macOS personal dictionary. It will be recognised as correct in every native Mac app from that point on. Ignore Spelling only suppresses the flag for the current session or document. When you reopen the document or start a new session, the word will be flagged again.

Does my personal dictionary sync across Macs?

Not automatically. Unlike Text Replacements, the macOS personal dictionary at ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary does not sync via iCloud. To use the same dictionary on multiple Macs, manually copy the file or sync it through a file sync service like Dropbox or a symlink to iCloud Drive.

Can I edit my personal dictionary directly?

Yes. The personal dictionary is a plain text file at ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary, with one word per line. Open it in any text editor, add or remove words directly, and save. Changes take effect immediately across all native Mac apps including Charm.