Privately Using LLMs for Spellchecking?

Questions
1

Other than LanguageTool, are there other privacy-friendly LLMs for spellchecking?

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2

Self-hostable models such as Llama are sufficient for your use case.

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3

This is the best one I know.

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4

That looks pretty good, and Automattic maintains the Github repository.

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5

Haha not sure if this one is a positive or negative. x)

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6

From my perspective, maintenance is better than neglect, regardless of the maintainer’s capability/credibility.

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7

Spellchecking is built-in featutes of many OS and softwares, most of them also allow custom dictionary, they check it in real time Unlike LLM.

LLM is quite inefficient as a spellchecker.

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8

Like @TinFoilHat says, many softwares do this.

A few that I know of: LibreOffice, Notesnook, I don’t know of any phone keyboards that don’t spellcheck, Brave browser.

A use case is I often type up a long post in Notesnook and copy/paste when I’m done.

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9

Disagree with both of you above because most of the time, the hard part is not the dictionary part but the overall whole sentence/a higher level meaning issue.
Local error correction fixes a few issues but not all of them because grammar/meaning is also a big piece of the cake.

I’m speaking from experience as a non-native english speaker. :joy:

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10

That would be another feature.

If OP / you needs a tool for that purpose, Local SLMs would do the trick. With appropriate system prompt, you can tailor the output format / language without giving further instructions. Models like Gemma 3 4B QAT is quite performant yet resource efficient.

Alternatively, you could use Proton’s Lumo for the same purpose, if it is not something sensitive, you can even use ChatGPT without an account.

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11

I guess that most people looking for a spellchecker could overall benefit from it being universally compatible with public/sensitive stuff and not need to have to deal with thinking twice where they can upload their text/files.

As for SLMs, I think that a follow up question would be: are there easy to use tools that provide that out of the box for non-tech savvy folks? :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
Of course, having something running in the background rather than needing to be copy-pasted would also be optimal.

Maybe I’ll give a try to Harper myself. :+1:t2:

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12

Thats true, I personally only use local SLMs, but I usually would suggest multiple options to cater different scenarios, in this case, would be

a) not having compatible hardware (phones / computers that could handle inferencing), plus
b) mid-high usage (rules out Lumo in this case due to free tier rate limit)

I personally use LMStudio (no its not FOSS, but it simply works, and it isn’t too bad), if you deduct the time required to download the software and the models, you can set it up in a matter of minutes, and there are plenty of basic tutorial out there.

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13

Might try, but how can I install?

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14

There are various integrations via web extensions and plugins in the documentation:

Here is the Firefox add-on:

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15

OP specifically asked about spellchecking. Not sure why you added in the extra feature-set of grammar correction.

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16

Grammar checking is fine, and so do paraphrasing

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17

It is IMO fixing the same issue and deserves to be put in the same package: speaking/writing a language well is an entire set of skills and not knowing how to spell words right. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Knowing how to drive is not only about pressing gas but also knowing the rules of the road. :+1:t2:

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18

Here is a guide on avoiding stylometry which is somewhat related. Stylometry Protection (Using Local LLMs) - The OPSEC Bible

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