How to Configure Charm Per App and Per Website
Charm lets you enable or disable each feature - Spells (spelling correction), Polish (grammar correction), and Oracle (word prediction) - independently per app and per website. Click the Charm icon in your Mac menu bar while the app you want to configure is in focus, then toggle the features on or off. Changes save automatically and persist across restarts.
How to open Charm's per-app settings
Charm lives in your Mac menu bar. You will see its icon in the top-right area of your screen, near the clock and other system status icons. Charm is always running in the background when your Mac is on.
To configure settings for a specific app, the order of steps matters:
- Click into the app you want to configure - make it the active, focused application. For example, click anywhere inside VS Code, or click into a Slack conversation.
- Click the Charm icon in the menu bar - the menu opens and Charm shows you which app is currently in focus at the top of the panel.
- Toggle Spells, Polish, or Oracle on or off using the switches next to each feature name.
The menu closes and your settings are saved immediately. The next time you switch to that app, Charm will apply the configuration you set. There is no Save button - the changes take effect the moment you toggle.
Charm shows you the name of the currently focused app at the top of its menu panel, so you can always confirm you are configuring the right application before making changes.
Which features to enable or disable per app
The right configuration depends on what you are doing in each app. Spells, Polish, and Oracle each have contexts where they help - and contexts where they get in the way.
Power users who configure Charm per-app report 40% fewer unwanted corrections than those using system-wide settings only. A few minutes of setup pays off every day.
| App type | Spells | Polish | Oracle | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VS Code / code editors | On | Off | Optional | Spells catches typos in comments and strings. Polish would try to rewrite code syntax as prose, which breaks things. Oracle is useful in comment blocks but can interfere in code itself. |
| Slack / Discord | On | On | On | All three features help you communicate clearly in real-time messages. No downside to having full correction in chat apps. |
| Numbers / Excel | Optional | Off | Off | Cell contents are values and formulas, not sentences. Polish and Oracle both assume prose context, so both create unwanted interference in spreadsheets. |
| Safari / Chrome (general) | On | On | On | Good defaults for general browser use - emails, social, documents. You can refine further using per-website settings (see below). |
| Terminal | N/A | N/A | N/A | Charm does not operate in Terminal. Command-line input areas do not expose text through the Accessibility API in the standard way, so Charm cannot read or modify them. |
These are starting points. Your specific workflow may call for different combinations - for example, a developer who writes long commit messages in VS Code's built-in Git panel might want Polish on in that context but off everywhere else in the editor.
How to configure Charm per website in Safari and Chrome
When Charm is active inside a browser - Safari or Chrome - it can go one level deeper than per-app settings. Rather than a single configuration for the entire browser, you can set different preferences for each website or domain.
This is particularly useful if you use web apps that have their own text handling - Notion, Figma, Linear, or any app with rich text editors that may conflict with external correction. It is also helpful if you use forms or data-entry pages where autocorrection would change values you need to be exact.
To configure Charm for a specific website:
- Navigate to the website you want to configure in Safari or Chrome.
- Click the Charm icon in the menu bar. Charm detects that you are in a browser and shows the current domain at the top of the panel.
- Toggle Spells, Polish, or Oracle on or off for that domain.
The settings are saved per domain. Visiting that website in the future - in any tab, in any window - will apply your saved preferences. Other websites remain unaffected and use either your browser-level defaults or their own per-domain settings.
Per-website settings take precedence over per-app settings. If you have Charm fully enabled for Safari as an app but disabled Polish for notion.so, Polish will be off when you are on Notion regardless of what the Safari-level setting says.
Resetting per-app configurations
If you want to return an app to its global defaults - removing any per-app customisation you set - open Charm's menu while that app is in focus and re-enable any features you want back. Charm does not have a single-click "reset to defaults" for individual apps, so restoring an app means manually toggling the features back to match your global preferences.
If you want to start completely fresh - removing all per-app and per-website customisations - you can reset Charm's configuration from within the app's main settings panel. This returns every app to the global Spells, Polish, and Oracle defaults you have set.
Frequently asked questions
How do I disable Charm in one specific app?
Click the Charm icon in your Mac menu bar while that app is in focus. You will see toggles for Spells, Polish, and Oracle. Toggle all three off to effectively disable Charm for that app. The settings are saved automatically and apply only to that application - Charm continues to work normally everywhere else.
Can I turn off just grammar correction in VS Code?
Yes. Click the Charm menu bar icon while VS Code is the focused app, then toggle Polish off. Spells and Oracle remain active if you want them. Each of the three features is controlled independently per app, so you can mix and match to suit your workflow.
Does Charm work in every Mac app?
Charm works in the vast majority of Mac apps via the macOS Accessibility API, which gives it access to standard text fields across native and Electron apps like VS Code, Slack, Notion, Mail, and thousands of others. Terminal is a notable exception - command-line input areas do not expose text through the Accessibility API in the standard way, so Charm does not operate there.
Will Charm remember my per-app settings after restart?
Yes. Charm stores per-app and per-website configurations persistently on your Mac. Settings survive app restarts, system reboots, and Charm updates. You configure each app once and Charm remembers your preferences indefinitely - no need to reconfigure after an update or restart.
Charm works how you need it to.
Configure spelling, grammar, and word prediction for every app on your Mac. $9.99, yours forever.