Codex Desktop: support native macOS spell checking in the prompt composer
What variant of Codex are you using?
Codex Desktop app on macOS
What feature would you like to see?
Problem
The prompt composer in the Codex macOS app does not appear to support
native macOS spell checking.
When writing longer instructions, misspelled words are not underlined and
the normal macOS spelling suggestions are unavailable. This makes prompts
harder to review before submitting them.
The issue primarily affects normal prose inside prompts. Code, file paths,
terminal commands, and identifiers should not be automatically corrected.
Proposed behaviour
Please integrate the Codex prompt composer with the native macOS spelling
system, including:
- Check Spelling While Typing
- red underlines for misspelled words
- Control-click spelling suggestions
- support for the macOS Spelling and Grammar menu
- respect for the user's system spelling language
- optional automatic correction controlled by the user's macOS settings
Important constraint
Spell checking should not modify code unexpectedly.
Ideally, automatic corrections should be disabled or handled carefully
inside:
- fenced Markdown code blocks
- inline code
- file paths
- URLs
- shell commands
- programming identifiers
The underlying prompt text and whitespace should remain unchanged unless
the user explicitly accepts a correction.
Why this would help
Codex prompts often contain a mixture of natural-language instructions and
code. Native spell checking would make the natural-language parts easier
to write and review without turning the composer into a rich-text editor.
Expected result
Misspelled prose in the composer is underlined using the normal macOS
spelling interface, while code and technical text remain safe from unwanted
automatic corrections.
Additional information
macOS version: 26
Codex version: Version 26.609.71450 • Released Jun 16, 2026
Input language: English