How to Use Charm's Polish Feature for Grammar Correction

Polish is Charm's grammar correction feature, analyzing your writing at the sentence level and fixing errors as you type. To activate it, click the Charm icon in your menu bar and toggle Polish on. Once enabled, Polish monitors your sentences system-wide and applies corrections automatically - signaled by a brief blue glow on the affected text, with no popups or interruptions.

What is Charm Polish?

Polish is one of three features inside Charm - alongside Spells for spelling correction and Oracle for word prediction. Where Spells focuses on individual words, Polish understands sentence structure and context. It is the layer that catches the grammar errors that a spell checker cannot see.

Grammar mistakes are more common than most writers realise. Studies of professional email communication find that subject-verb disagreement, incorrect tense usage, and sentence fragments appear in roughly 1 in every 5 messages written under time pressure. Polish addresses this silently in the background so your writing stays accurate without requiring a manual review pass.

How Polish differs from Spells

The distinction between the two features is straightforward:

• Spells fixes individual misspelled words: teh → the, recieve → receive, metting → meeting
• Polish fixes grammar at the sentence level: incorrect verb tenses, subject-verb disagreement, sentence fragments

The two features are complementary and designed to run together. Spells handles word-level accuracy; Polish handles sentence-level accuracy. For a walkthrough of the spelling correction side, see How to Use Charm's Spells Feature.

How to enable Polish

Polish is not enabled by default - unlike Spells, which is active from the moment you install Charm. You need to turn it on manually the first time. Here is how:

• Click the Charm icon in your Mac menu bar (top-right area of your screen)
• Find the Polish toggle in the popover that appears
• Toggle Polish on - it will appear highlighted when active

Polish is now running system-wide. No further configuration is required. If you have not yet installed Charm, the setup guide for Charm on Mac walks through installation and Accessibility permission in a few minutes.

How Polish corrects your writing

Polish monitors your writing in real-time. After you finish a sentence and type a punctuation mark - a period, question mark, or exclamation point - Polish analyzes the complete sentence. If a grammar error is detected, it applies the correction automatically.

You will see a brief blue glow effect on the corrected text. This is Polish's correction signal - a subtle visual indicator that something was changed. The glow fades within about a second. It keeps you informed without demanding your attention or disrupting your flow.

The blue glow is the only visible output Polish produces. There are no dialogue boxes, no red underlines to dismiss, and no suggestions to accept or reject. The corrected sentence simply replaces the original.

What kinds of errors Polish fixes

Polish is built for the grammar errors that appear most often in everyday professional writing - the ones that come from typing quickly, not from a lack of grammatical knowledge.

Common correction categories include:

• Subject-verb agreement: The files was saved → The files were saved
• Incorrect tense usage: I have went to the meeting → I have gone to the meeting
• Comma placement: missing or misplaced commas in compound sentences
• Sentence fragments: incomplete sentences that are missing a subject or verb
• Run-on sentences: splitting fused clauses where the sentence structure allows it
• Common grammar mistakes in professional writing: incorrect article usage, double negatives, dangling modifiers

What Polish does not do

Knowing the boundaries of Polish helps you get the most from it and understand where other tools might complement it.

Polish does not:

• Rewrite sentences for style or tone - Polish fixes errors, it does not rephrase your voice
• Flag passive voice - passive voice is an editorial choice, not a grammar mistake
• Restructure paragraphs - Polish works within individual sentences, not across them
• Suggest vocabulary improvements - word choice is outside Polish's scope

If you are looking for a broader comparison of grammar tools available on macOS, see Best Grammar Checker for Mac for a full breakdown of the options.

How to undo a Polish correction

If Polish makes a correction you disagree with - for instance, adjusting a sentence you wrote intentionally in an informal style - reverting it is immediate.

Press Cmd+Z right after the correction. This undoes the Polish change only and leaves the rest of your text intact. The undo works in any Mac app, with no Charm-specific UI required. You can then continue typing from exactly where you were.

When to turn Polish off

Polish is designed to run continuously in the background, but there are a few situations where you may prefer to disable it:

Creative writing with intentional grammar choices. If you are writing fiction, poetry, or any content where unconventional grammar is part of the voice, Polish may correct things that are not errors. Toggle it off via the menu bar while you write that content.

Code editors and technical tools. Polish analyzes natural language sentences, so it is not useful - and may be disruptive - in apps where you are primarily writing code. Rather than turning Polish off globally, you can disable Charm for a specific app: click the Charm icon while that app is in focus and select "Disable for [App Name]". Polish continues working in every other app.

Any app where you want full manual control. Per-app disabling lets you keep Polish running everywhere you want it and off everywhere you do not, without toggling the feature on and off repeatedly.

Frequently asked questions

How do I turn on Charm's Polish feature?

Click the Charm icon in your Mac menu bar and toggle Polish on. Polish is not enabled by default - you need to activate it manually the first time. Once on, it stays active system-wide across every Mac app until you turn it off.

What kinds of grammar mistakes does Polish fix?

Polish fixes subject-verb disagreement (The files was saved to The files were saved), incorrect tense usage (I have went to I have gone), comma placement errors, sentence fragments, and common run-on sentences. It does not rewrite sentences for style or flag passive voice.

How do I undo a correction Polish made?

Press Cmd+Z immediately after any Polish correction to undo it. This only reverts the grammar correction - other text you typed remains unchanged. The undo works in any Mac app without any Charm-specific UI.

Does Polish work in code editors?

Polish is designed for natural language text. In code editors, sentence analysis is rarely helpful. You can disable Charm for a specific app via the menu bar - Polish continues running in every other app while leaving that one untouched.

What is the difference between Polish and Spells?

Spells corrects individual misspelled words - for example, teh to the. Polish corrects grammar at the sentence level - for example, fixing incorrect verb tenses or subject-verb disagreement. They are complementary features and can run together simultaneously.