Hunspell

---

title: "Hunspell" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["free-spelling-checking-programs", "spell-checkers", "language-software-for-linux", "language-software-for-macos", "language-software-for-windows"] description: "Spell checker for complex languages" topic_path: "technology/operating-systems" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunspell" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Spell checker for complex languages ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

Field	Value
name	Hunspell
developer	László Németh
latest release version
latest release date
programming language
operating system	Cross-platform
genre	Spell checker
license	GNU Lesser General Public License and Mozilla Public License
website
::

| name = Hunspell | logo = | screenshot = | caption = | developer = László Németh | latest release version = | latest release date = | programming language = | operating system = Cross-platform | genre = Spell checker | license = GNU Lesser General Public License and Mozilla Public License | website = Hunspell is a spell checker and morphological analyser designed for languages with rich morphology and complex word compounding and character encoding, originally designed for the Hungarian language.

Hunspell is based on MySpell and is backward-compatible with MySpell dictionaries. While MySpell uses a single-byte character encoding, Hunspell can use Unicode UTF-8-encoded dictionaries.

Uses

Software with Hunspell support:

::data[format=table]

Name	Type	Group	Method	Notes	Name	Type	Group	Method	Notes
	Chrome	Web browser	Google	?	last1=Shankland	first1=Stephen	title=Google augments open-source spell-check	url=http://www.cnet.com/news/google-augments-open-source-spell-check/	website=CNET
	Chromium	Web browser	Google	?
	Empathy	Instant messaging		Dynamically-linked libenchant	Issue selecting dictionaries Enchant
	Firefox	Web browser	Mozilla	?
	Illustrator	Vector graphics	Adobe	Statically-linked libhunspell
	InDesign	Desktop publishing	Adobe	Statically-linked libhunspell	Since CS5.5
	gedit	Text editor	GNOME	Dynamically-linked libenchant via GtkSpell
	GroupWise				Starting in version 2012
	JetBrains IDEs	Integrated development environment	JetBrains	—	ReSharper & IDEs use Hunspell dictionaries
	.NET
	Origyn Web Browser	Web browser		Dynamically-linked spellchecker.library	Since 3.12
	Perl
	QuarkXPress	Desktop publishing	Quark Software Inc.	Statically-linked libhunspell	Since QuarkXPress 2017
	Scribus	Desktop publishing		Dynamically-linked libenchant	Since 1.4.2
::

License

Hunspell is free software, distributed under the terms of a GPL, LGPL and MPL tri-license.

About the author

Hunspell was developed by the Hungarian biologist and free software developer László Németh. His recent job as a lead programmer is related to also free software, especially to LibreOffice. He contributes for OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice, as a code contributor since 2002 (spell checking, hyphenation etc.). He also contributes and makes patches for Hunspell spell checker with Unicode, compound word and agglutinative language support; Unicode and non-standard hyphenation; thesaurus component with stemming and suffixation; Lightproof grammar checker; Graphite versions of Linux Libertine and Biolinum fonts with extended typographical capabilities.

References

References

1. "Google augments open-source spell-check".
2. (7 October 2009). "Spell checking doesn't allow US English words when using "English" language".
3. Sousa, Miguel. (5 November 2011). "How to enable more languages in InDesign CS5.5".
4. "GtkSpell".
5. "GroupWise 2012".
6. "Spellchecking {{!}} ReSharper".
7. (2018-01-19). "Hunspell dictionaries support {{!}} The PhpStorm Blog".
8. "Spellchecking {{!}} IntelliJ IDEA".
9. "NHunspell - Free Spell-Checker, Hyphenation and Thesaurus for .NET".
10. "Text-Hunspell-2.16 - Perl interface to the Hunspell library".
11. Lamy, Arnaud. (14 August 2018). "Professional Spell Checker XTension for QuarkXPress".
12. "1.4.2 Release".
13. "Laszlo Nemeth — English".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::