Google is developing an on-device grammar check tool for Chromebooks

For nearly every user out there, proper grammar isn’t exactly #1 on the priority list. We all want to write and speak in a way that makes us sound educated-enough, but going through the effort to constantly make sure our sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation all line up perfectly isn’t exactly the most important thing for most users. While there are tools out there to help, those add-on assistants often come with a whole extra set of complications and frustrations that turn users away.

In an effort to bridge this gap, Google looks to be working on a device-native grammar check tool that will be included in Chrome OS for Chromebook users. Details are a bit scant right now, but work has clearly begun for this new feature and it at least is clear that this will be an on-device feature that won’t require server assistance to work. See for yourself.

nocturne: enable on-device grammar check.

I am creating ebuild for grammar check in crrev.com/c/2439576, and will use this flag. It is no-op before the ebuild is checked in.

#Enable on-device grammar check
#USE=”${USE} ondevice_grammar

via the Chromium Gerrit

How this will all come together is obviously a question mark at this point, but I’d imagine we’ll see something similar to what we have via extensions such as Grammarly that give slight visual queues when sentence structure is out of line or spelling becomes an issue. As I said in the opening, most people don’t love manual proof reading and simply won’t spend the time to do it in messages or email.

A service that could leverage Google’s machine learning and AI to locally help me correct silly grammar mistakes, however, could become a fantastic added feature for Chromebooks as it would work natively in any app or service that I’m using on my device at any given time. Language and syntax can be tricky to grasp and understand. Built-in help that seamlessly works throughout Chrome OS would be a big win for Chromebooks users for sure. We’ll be keeping an eye out for this very-early feature to land in future updates.