How to Turn On or off Highlight Misspelled Words in Windows 11
Windows 11 highlights misspelled words as you type by underlining them with a red squiggly line. You can turn this feature on or off in the Settings app.
Open Settings and navigate to Time & language, then Typing. Check or uncheck the box next to Highlight misspelled words to enable or disable the feature. This will add or remove red squiggly lines under misspelled words as you type.
Why Use This Feature?
Windows 11 includes a native spell checker. Activating this utility places a red squiggly line beneath unrecognized terms. Catching typos instantly becomes much faster with this active.
What Happens When You Use It?
Enabling this setting adds a red line underneath any typed word that is missing from your personal dictionary. Right-click a flagged word to see correction suggestions.
Option 1Use Settings
Turn On or Off Highlight Misspelled Words in Settings
- Open Settings by pressing
Win+I. - Click Time & language on the left side.
- Click Typing on the right side. (see screenshot below)
Open Settings to manage the spell-checking feature. Navigate to Typing settings and check or uncheck the box next to ‘Highlight misspelled words’.
- Check the box (on – default) or uncheck the box (off) next to Highlight misspelled words. (see screenshot below)
- You can now close Settings.
Option 2Use Registry
Turn On or Off Highlight Misspelled Words Using Registry
⚠️ Admin privileges required
Turn On Highlight Misspelled Words
This is the default setting:
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TabletTip\1.7" /v EnableSpellchecking /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
Turn Off Highlight Misspelled Words
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TabletTip\1.7" /v EnableSpellchecking /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Summary
Windows 11 flags typos by marking misspelled words with a red underline, and the Settings app provides full control over this behavior.
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About the Author
Richard
Tech Writer, IT Professional
Richard is a writer at Geek Rewind who turns complex IT tasks into clear, step-by-step guides. He draws on years of hands-on experience in system administration and enterprise IT operations, focusing on Windows, Linux and WordPress: the problems people actually run into, and the fixes that work. His server and WordPress guides come from systems he runs himself. Richard builds and maintains the platform behind Geek Rewind, from its Ubuntu servers and Nginx configuration to its custom WordPress plugins. Many new tutorials start with readers' questions, and he's always glad to answer them in the comments.
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