# Privately Using LLMs for Spellchecking? **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/privately-using-llms-for-spellchecking/35811 **Category:** Questions **Tags:** please-eli5 **Created:** 2026-02-27T02:27:38Z **Posts:** 22 ## Post 1 by @anon1193858 — 2026-02-27T02:27:39Z Other than LanguageTool, are there other privacy-friendly LLMs for spellchecking? --- ## Post 2 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-02-27T03:39:37Z Self-hostable models such as Llama are sufficient for your use case. --- ## Post 3 by @anon4124882 — 2026-02-27T07:06:03Z > **[Harper | Privacy-First Offline Grammar Checker](https://writewithharper.com/)** > > Harper checks your writing instantly—fast, lightweight and utterly private—so you can polish every clause without surrendering a single keystroke. This is the best one I know. --- ## Post 4 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-02-27T07:16:26Z That looks pretty good, and Automattic maintains the Github repository. --- ## Post 5 by @kissu — 2026-02-27T08:34:18Z > [@FranklyFlawless](#): > > Automattic maintains the Github repository Haha not sure if this one is a positive or negative. x) --- ## Post 6 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-02-27T08:46:44Z From my perspective, maintenance is better than neglect, regardless of the maintainer’s capability/credibility. --- ## Post 7 by @TinFoilHat — 2026-02-27T08:50:27Z 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. --- ## Post 8 by @Scott — 2026-02-27T09:11:54Z 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. --- ## Post 9 by @kissu — 2026-02-27T10:00:38Z 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: --- ## Post 10 by @TinFoilHat — 2026-02-27T10:29:03Z 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. --- ## Post 11 by @kissu — 2026-02-27T10:38:39Z 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: --- ## Post 12 by @TinFoilHat — 2026-02-27T10:51:59Z > [@kissu](#): > > most people looking for a spellchecker could overall benefit from it being universally compatible with public/sensitive stuff 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) > [@kissu](#): > > are there easy to use tools that provide that out of the box for non-tech savvy folks? 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. --- ## Post 13 by @anon1193858 — 2026-02-27T11:42:58Z Might try, but how can I install? --- ## Post 14 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-02-27T12:34:40Z There are various integrations via web extensions and plugins in the documentation: > **[Harper | Privacy-First Offline Grammar Checker](https://writewithharper.com/docs/about)** > > Harper checks your writing instantly—fast, lightweight and utterly private—so you can polish every clause without surrendering a single keystroke. Here is the Firefox add-on: > **[Private Grammar Checker - Harper – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/private-grammar-checker-harper/)** > > Download Private Grammar Checker - Harper for Firefox. A private grammar checker for 21st Century English --- ## Post 15 by @Scott — 2026-02-27T16:06:12Z OP specifically asked about spellchecking. Not sure why you added in the extra feature-set of grammar correction. --- ## Post 17 by @kissu — 2026-02-27T20:48:29Z 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: --- ## Post 18 by @Expert4870 — 2026-02-27T21:44:15Z Here is a guide on avoiding stylometry which is somewhat related. [Stylometry Protection (Using Local LLMs) - The OPSEC Bible](https://opsec.hackliberty.org/opsec/stylometry/) --- ## Post 19 by @icecubetr — 2026-03-21T14:03:47Z > **[GitHub - whiteh4cker-tr/grammar-llm: AI-powered grammar checker using fine-tuned...](https://github.com/whiteh4cker-tr/grammar-llm)** > > AI-powered grammar checker using fine-tuned language models to fix grammatical errors in text. --- ## Post 20 by @Archer — 2026-03-21T23:06:49Z > [@kissu](#): > > 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: Isn’t “meaning-checking” a whole other thing then spellchecking? --- ## Post 21 by @phomola — 2026-07-02T22:13:22Z Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (a cloud-based LLM) is privacy-friendly. --- ## Post 22 by @FranklyFlawless — 2026-07-03T00:08:33Z About as privacy-friendly as sharing it with NVIDIA and Google: > **[Expanding Private Cloud Compute - Apple Security Research](https://security.apple.com/blog/expanding-pcc/)** > > Alongside the next generation of Apple Intelligence, today we’re expanding Private Cloud Compute (PCC) beyond Apple’s data centers. When Apple introduced Private Cloud Compute in 2024, we defined a new frontier for private AI inference, extending the...