Without naming names, there’s a well advertised grammar editing tool that’s available either as an app download or browser extension. This is something I’d value for a number of reasons (good grammar is important!) but I’m super cautious about anything I’m giving permission to watch what I’m typing.
Ideally, I’d prefer to select text and have it analyzed on-demand using on-device intelligence. I’m on a Mac and it seems like Pages isn’t cut out to check grammar. Also, there’s no way in heck I’m paying $30 a month for a subscription.
Edit: I just want to acknowledge my request for something I’d value and then saying I don’t want to pay for it. I would certainly pay for something if it met my needs but this function isn’t something I’d personally value at $30 a month or any monthly subscription ($30 a year sounds reasonable). Moreover, if there’s any suspicion of an application using my data for their own profit, they are not getting my money. So, in this case, for the sake of data privacy, I would prefer to pay for something (preferably once - grammar shouldn’t need updating).
Grammarly has a terrible privacy policy, so you are right to be cautious. Unfortunately I don’t have any good alternatives to offer as I only use spellcheck myself.
This one is recommended by Mozilla
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/languagetool/
It DOES still need to send data somewhere to check
Your privacy is important to us: By default, this extension will check your text by sending it to languagetool.org over a securely encrypted connection. No account is needed to use this extension. We don’t store your IP address. See https://languagetool.org/privacy/ for our privacy policy.
I don’t want to confirm details I don’t know, so someone else should probably explain more on if this is good/bad
It’s on my to-do list, but you can also spin up your own language tool instance so that your data never leaves your house, since it is open source: https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool
If you have a homeserver it can go there, otherwise you can also run it on your computer although I am not sure how much RAM it will use.
I did a quick read through of the privacy policy and a few corporation names really stuck out.
We use stored texts for machine learning… The machine learning takes place on servers of Google Ireland Ltd
Hi Google
[F]or the “Rephrasing” feature… we must send the particular sentence to OpenAI and Aleph Alpha for processing. OpenAI reserves the right to store this data.
Hi OpenAI
Your data will be deleted as soon as you delete your user account.
If only deleting the data was possible without deleting your account
On this website, the “TikTok Pixel” of the social network TikTok, which is operated by TikTok Technology Limited…
Hi TikTok
security authorities in a third country may gain access to your IP address without you being able to take legally effective action against them.
Hi people outside the GDPR area
You can run LanguageTool locally. While it isn’t as great as the paid version, I use this to check nearly everything I write for work in my native language, and in the other languages I speak
https://caderek.github.io/gramma/ is a cli spellchecker that has the option of installing a LT server locally. Not ideal if you are writing things with Pages/Word/etc., but a possible backup.
You can run your own instance of this?
Isn’t it crazy that word processors came with grammar checkers installed, and they never needed an internet connection… And now, in order to get the same functionality decades later, we need to spin up a web server that does more or less the same thing?
I’m curious why they don’t just make an extension that runs within the browser, rather than pinging a server…
Very true.
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