How to Customize the Correction Glow in Charm

Charm shows a brief coloured glow around corrected words: cyan for spelling corrections, blue for grammar corrections, and purple when you accept a word prediction. You can customize or completely disable the glow in Charm's preferences. Most users find the subtle animation helpful for building trust in the tool; others prefer completely silent correction without any visual indicator.

What the correction glow means in Charm

Every time Charm fixes a word, a soft pulse of colour briefly surrounds it. This is not decorative - each colour maps directly to one of Charm's three core features, so you always know exactly what kind of help you just received.

Cyan glow: Spells (spelling correction). When Charm's Spells feature detects and fixes a misspelled word, a cyan pulse appears around the corrected word. This is the most common glow you will see during everyday typing.

Blue glow: Polish (grammar correction). When Polish catches a grammar issue - a misplaced comma, an incorrect verb form, an awkward construction - and fixes it automatically, the word or phrase pulses blue. Blue corrections tend to be subtler edits than spelling fixes.

Purple glow: Oracle (word prediction accepted). When you accept a word suggestion from Oracle, the completed word pulses purple. This colour acts as confirmation that the prediction was applied rather than typed manually.

The glow only ever appears on the specific word that was corrected - never on the entire text field or paragraph. It lasts around 300ms and then fades, keeping your writing flow completely uninterrupted. Knowing the colour system is useful because it helps you notice patterns: if you are seeing a lot of cyan, Charm is catching frequent spelling slips; a lot of blue means grammar is being actively tidied.

How to customize the glow in Charm

Charm gives you direct control over how the glow behaves. All settings are in the same place: the Charm preferences panel.

To get there, click the Charm icon in your Mac menu bar - the small icon that sits alongside your other menu bar apps in the top-right corner of your screen. From the dropdown menu that appears, select Preferences.

Inside Preferences, look for the Correction Glow section. You will find two adjustments:

Intensity. You can set the glow to subtle, normal, or bright. Subtle is the default and is designed to be noticeable without drawing attention. Normal is slightly more pronounced - useful if you find the default hard to see on certain display settings or in dark environments. Bright is the most visible option, suitable for users who actively want to track every correction Charm makes.

Toggle on/off. A single switch lets you disable the glow entirely. With the glow off, Charm corrects text silently - no visual feedback of any kind.

All changes take effect immediately. There is no need to restart Charm or your Mac after adjusting the glow settings.

How to turn off the glow completely

Disabling the glow is a four-step process:

Step 1. Click the Charm icon in your Mac menu bar.

Step 2. Select Preferences from the menu.

Step 3. Find the Correction Glow setting and toggle it off.

Step 4. The change applies immediately - no restart required.

With the glow disabled, Charm continues to correct spelling, fix grammar, and predict words exactly as before. The glow is optional feedback, not part of the correction engine. Your text is still being improved; you just will not see the visual confirmation.

There are several good reasons to turn the glow off completely. If you frequently share your screen in meetings or give presentations, a pulsing animation drawing attention to corrections can be distracting for your audience. If you find any kind of flashing or pulsing UI element uncomfortable - a common accessibility consideration - disabling the glow is the right call. Some users simply prefer a completely invisible writing tool that operates without any visible footprint.

Should you keep the glow enabled?

There is a real case for keeping the glow on, especially when you are new to Charm.

The glow builds awareness. When you can see Charm working - a small cyan flash here, a blue pulse there - you develop an accurate picture of how often it is helping and what kinds of errors it is catching. That visibility is reassuring. It turns Charm from an invisible black box into a tool you can observe and learn from. Over time, many users notice they have stopped making certain recurring errors simply because the glow kept drawing attention to them.

The glow also provides confirmation that a correction actually happened. Without it, you might second-guess whether Charm caught a typo or whether your finger slipped. The brief pulse removes that uncertainty.

The case for turning it off is simpler: some people find any animation in their writing environment distracting, and Charm is designed to respect that preference. There is no penalty to disabling it. Silent correction is a first-class experience in Charm, not a fallback.

If you are unsure, try leaving the glow on at its default subtle intensity for a week. You can always switch it off later - and switching back is equally instant.

Frequently asked questions

What does the glow in Charm mean?

The glow is a brief visual pulse that appears around a word when Charm makes a correction. The colour tells you which feature made the change: cyan for a spelling fix from Spells, blue for a grammar fix from Polish, and purple for an accepted word prediction from Oracle.

How do I turn off the correction glow in Charm?

Click the Charm icon in your menu bar, open Preferences, and find the Correction Glow setting. Toggle it off. The change applies immediately - no restart needed - and Charm continues to correct your writing silently in the background.

Why does Charm show different colours when it corrects?

Each colour corresponds to a specific Charm feature: cyan means Spells fixed a spelling error, blue means Polish fixed a grammar issue, and purple means you accepted a prediction from Oracle. The colours are intentional feature indicators that match Charm's design system, so you always know what kind of correction happened.

Does Charm still correct my text without the glow?

Yes. The glow is purely optional visual feedback. With it disabled, Charm's Spells, Polish, and Oracle features continue working exactly as normal. Corrections happen silently at the same speed - sub-200ms - with no change to accuracy.