Better Spelling

A lightweight Alfred workflow that replaces the built-in "Spell" feature with GNU aspell for higher-quality spelling suggestions.

⤓ Download for Alfred

Requirements

• Alfred with Powerpack
• aspell installed via Homebrew:

brew install aspell

Installation

1. Install aspell via Homebrew: brew install aspell
2. Download the latest Better-Spelling.alfredworkflow from the Releases page
3. Double-click the downloaded file to install in Alfred
4. ⚠️ Disable Alfred's built-in spelling feature (since both use the spell keyword):
   • Open Alfred Preferences → Features → Web Search
   • Find "Spelling" and uncheck "Enabled"

Usage

1. Open Alfred (default: ⌘ Space)
2. Type spell followed by the word you want to check
3. Select a result to copy the corrected spelling to your clipboard

Configuration

Open Alfred Preferences → Workflows → "Better Spelling" → click Configure Workflow (top right) to adjust:

• Max Spelling Words: Maximum number of suggestions to show (1-12, default: 12)

You can also set the ALFRED_SPELL_LANG environment variable to change the language (default: en_US).

Debug Logging

If you're experiencing issues, you can enable debug logging to help diagnose problems:

1. Open Alfred Preferences → Workflows → "Better Spelling"
2. Click the [x] button in the top-right corner (workflow environment variables)
3. Add a new variable: ALFRED_SPELL_DEBUG with value 1

Logs will be written to ~/Library/Logs/alfred-better-spell.log. You can view them with:

tail -f ~/Library/Logs/alfred-better-spell.log

To disable logging, remove the variable or set it to 0.

License

MIT