Chrome’s spell-checker works for multiple languages at the same time in Dev channel update

Google has made a useful improvement to its spell-checking in the latest version of the Dev channel of the Chrome browser. Thanks to the tweak, you can now run the spell-checker tool for multiple languages at once — there’s no need to switch.

The new feature is included in the log for version 45.0.2453.0 of the Chrome Dev channel, which became available earlier today.

Once you install this new version, you have to turn on the feature by going to chrome://flags page and clicking the enable button under “Enable Multilingual Spellchecker.” From there, you can go to chrome://settings/languages and add multiple languages, or adjust the spell-checking options in the right-click menu. Note that the feature works only on Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.

Once I got the feature running successfully on a PC running Windows, I was able to spell-check text simultaneously in English and German. Some languages listed in the Chrome language settings don’t work with spell-check, leading me to think that results may vary.

Until now, you could only run the spell-checker for one language at a time. You could change the language by selecting a different one in the right-click menu. Today’s update makes it easier to write in two or more languages.

This isn’t a huge move forward, but it should be convenient for people who type in multiple languages while using Chrome. Other recent feature experiments in Chrome include a way to automatically pause less important Flash content, so you can reduce battery consumption on your device.

Such Chrome updates count for a lot, given that more than a billion people use the Chrome browser.

It’s unclear if this feature will be released for the Mac. And there’s no guarantee that it will be rolled out to Chrome’s Beta or Stable channels. But hey, it’s working in the Chrome Dev channel on this Windows computer.