Scrivener relies on the macOS system checkers rather than shipping its own, and they are switched off in more places than most writers realise. Turn them on properly in Edit > Spelling and Grammar, set your dictionary language explicitly, then decide whether you want something that also fixes errors as you type. Because Scrivener is a native Mac app, live inline correction works there in full. This guide covers all three steps, plus the Grammarly compatibility issue that sends most people looking in the first place.
Why does spell check feel broken in Scrivener?
Usually because two separate switches are involved and only one of them is on. Scrivener does not carry its own dictionary. It hands spelling and grammar to macOS, so a setting turned off in System Settings or in Scrivener's own Edit menu leaves you with silent, unchecked prose in a 90,000 word manuscript.
The second cause is scale. A novel lives in dozens or hundreds of separate documents in the Binder. Checking is per document, so a red squiggle you never scrolled past in chapter four stays there indefinitely. Nothing sweeps the whole project for you the way a word processor sweeps a single long file.
The third is vocabulary. Invented names, places, and archaic spellings get flagged constantly, so writers train themselves to ignore the underlines. Once you are ignoring them, real typos slip through with the imaginary ones.
How do you turn on Scrivener's built-in spelling and grammar check?
Open Edit > Spelling and Grammar in Scrivener and tick the options you want. That submenu is the whole control panel: Check Spelling While Typing gives you the red underlines, Check Grammar With Spelling adds the macOS grammar layer, and Correct Spelling Automatically applies obvious fixes without a right-click.
Then set your language deliberately. In System Settings > Keyboard > Text Input > Edit, choose British English or American English outright rather than leaving spelling on Automatic by Language. Automatic detection can drift mid-manuscript, which is how a British novel ends up with three American spellings of "realise" in the back half.
Two more habits help. Right-click any invented name and choose Learn Spelling so it stops being flagged. And use Show Spelling and Grammar (Command-Colon) to walk a finished document error by error, since nothing checks the whole Binder at once. Literature and Latte's own forum thread on grammar and spell checking covers how far these options go.
Why does Grammarly stop working in Scrivener?
It is a documented compatibility issue between the two apps, and Literature and Latte's own forum is where it gets reported. In October 2023, users found that inline suggestions stopped appearing in documents containing comments or links. In June 2025 a second thread described the same silence in documents marked "Include in Compile".
The workarounds writers trade are telling. Delete every comment in the document. Type a deliberate error, right-click, and choose "Show all" to wake the checker up. Copy the chapter out to another app, check it there, and paste it back. Third-party guides such as Jen Terpstra's Grammarly and Scrivener walkthrough exist precisely because the round trip needs explaining.
None of that is a criticism of either app. Two independent products touching the same text view will occasionally disagree. But if your checker only works in documents without comments, the fit is wrong for the way novelists work.
What are the options for better checking?
There are three realistic routes, and they differ most in whether corrections are applied for you or merely suggested. The built-in macOS checkers are free and always present but light on grammar. Grammarly is thorough but subject to the compatibility gaps above and priced as a subscription. Charm sits between them: it corrects mechanics inline and leaves your wording alone.
The cost difference between the two paid options is worth doing the arithmetic on. Grammarly Premium is a subscription, roughly $12 a month billed annually, so about $144 a year for as long as you keep writing. Charm is $9.99 once, covers three Macs, and carries a 14-day money-back guarantee. A novel takes months or years, so the recurring fee renews several times before a first draft is finished, while the one-time purchase is paid and forgotten. The built-in macOS checkers remain free, of course; the price contrast here is with the subscription.
| Option | Corrects inline | Affected by comments or footnotes | Price | On-device | Changes your wording |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| macOS built-in check | Spelling only | No | Free, built into macOS | Yes | No |
| Grammarly | Suggestions, reported to drop out | Yes, per the forum reports above | Subscription, about $12/month billed annually (roughly $144/year) | No, cloud based | Yes, it suggests rewrites |
| Charm | Yes, spelling and grammar | No | $9.99 one-time, no subscription, 3 Macs | Yes | No, mechanics only |
How does Charm work in Scrivener?
It corrects as you type, with no keystroke and no per-document setup. Scrivener is a native Cocoa Mac app, which matters more than it sounds: Charm reads and replaces text through the macOS Accessibility API, and native apps expose that layer fully. So Scrivener gets Charm's automatic mode, not a compromise.
That is worth contrasting honestly. In browsers and Electron apps, where the text layer is less cooperative, Charm falls back to Fix Selection: highlight the passage and press Option-Command-V. Useful, but a step. In Scrivener there is no step. Misspellings are fixed mid-sentence, grammar is checked at each sentence boundary, and next-word prediction offers a completion you accept with Tab.
Setup is one permission grant that applies everywhere on your Mac. Everything runs on-device with local models, so a manuscript never leaves your machine, and it works on a train with no signal. See how grammar checking works across every Mac app for the wider picture, or how Charm compares with Grammarly.
Will it change my writing voice?
No. Charm fixes mechanics and never rewords. It will correct "teh" to "the", fix subject-verb agreement, repair a broken contraction, de-capitalise a word that should not be capitalised, and finish a question with the right punctuation. It will not rephrase a sentence, swap your word for a more common synonym, or tell you a paragraph is too passive.
For fiction that distinction is the whole thing. A fragment is a choice. A run-on is pacing. Dialect in dialogue is characterisation. Tools that score your prose for readability treat all three as faults, and writers end up either fighting the suggestions or slowly sanding their voice flat to satisfy them.
Charm has no opinion about your prose. It has an opinion about your typing. That is a much smaller claim, and it is the one worth making inside a manuscript you have spent a year on. If you are assembling a wider toolkit, our roundups of the best Mac writing tools for authors and the best Mac setup for writers cover what pairs well with Scrivener.
Frequently asked questions
Does Scrivener have a built-in grammar checker on Mac?
Scrivener on Mac uses the macOS system checkers rather than shipping its own. Under Edit > Spelling and Grammar you can turn on Check Spelling While Typing, Check Grammar With Spelling, and Correct Spelling Automatically. The grammar layer in macOS is light, so it catches obvious agreement and punctuation slips rather than everything a dedicated checker would.
Why do Grammarly suggestions disappear inside my Scrivener document?
Literature and Latte's own forum documents this. In October 2023 users reported inline suggestions stopping when a document contained comments or links, and in June 2025 a similar report covered documents marked "Include in Compile". It is a compatibility issue between the two apps rather than something wrong with your project, and the workarounds people share are fragile.
Will a correction tool rewrite my prose or change my voice?
Charm will not. It fixes mechanics only: spelling, agreement, tense, contractions, capitalisation and punctuation. It never rephrases a sentence, swaps a word for a smarter synonym, or flags your writing as too wordy or too passive. Your sentences come out the shape you wrote them.
How do I stop my character and place names being marked as errors?
Add them to a personal dictionary. In Scrivener you can right-click any word and choose Learn Spelling to add it to the macOS dictionary. Charm keeps its own personal dictionary too, so an invented name is accepted once and then left alone everywhere on your Mac, including your notes app and your email.
Does Charm work in Scrivener as well as it does elsewhere?
Better, in fact. Scrivener is a native Cocoa Mac app, so Charm's automatic inline correction runs there in full as you type. In browsers and Electron apps Charm falls back to Fix Selection with Option-Command-V, but in Scrivener no keystroke is needed at all.