Correct Selection: fix grammar in any app with one shortcut
Select text in any app and double-tap the right Option key. Spelling, punctuation, capitalization and clear grammar mistakes are fixed where the text sits, your wording stays yours, and one ⌘Z puts the original back.
What does Correct Selection fix?
It works like a careful copy-editor with a short brief. The model is allowed to make these changes and nothing else:
- Spelling, where the intended word is unambiguous: "definitly" becomes "definitely".
- Punctuation, capitalization and spacing, by the conventions of the language the text is in.
- Clear grammar errors, such as agreement, tense, articles and word order, with the smallest change that makes the sentence correct.
- Brand and product names, when the intended name is obvious: "macbook" becomes "MacBook".
It is told not to rephrase, summarize, change the tone or swap a correct word for a synonym. When it is unsure, it leaves the text as it was. If you want the text changed rather than fixed, that is Edit Selection, which follows an instruction you speak.
The language is never changed. A passage can be in any of the 140+ languages the cleanup model covers, or in several at once, and each word is corrected in the language it was written in.
How do I correct a selection?
- Select the text. A word, a sentence or a whole draft, up to 4,000 characters, roughly 600 English words.
- Double-tap the right Option key. Two quick presses, within about a third of a second. The HUD appears in green with its working dots, and a sound marks the start.
- Wait a moment. The corrected text is pasted over the selection, and a second sound marks the end.
Nothing is recorded. There is no microphone step, so this works in a quiet office, a library, or on a call where speaking isn't an option.
If you double-clicked a word and caught the space after it, or triple-clicked a line and caught its line break, those are put back exactly as they were. The correction doesn't weld the text to its neighbour.
Why did nothing change?
Usually because nothing needed to. When the result matches your selection, Dictera leaves the document alone instead of pasting the same text over itself. That paste would flatten any formatting, add an undo step for nothing and move your cursor. With sound effects on, you still hear both sounds, so you know the shortcut worked.
The other reasons, and what you see for each:
- Nothing was selected. Nothing happens at all: no HUD, no sound. This is the first thing to check when the key seems dead.
- The answer was refused. Every result is checked before it reaches your document. If it comes back in a different alphabet, much longer or much shorter than what you selected, it cannot be a copy-edit, so it is thrown away and your text stays.
- You switched apps while it worked. The HUD says nothing was corrected. The replacement pastes over whatever is selected, so it will not land in an app it didn't read from.
- The text is too long. Past 4,000 characters the HUD says so. Correct a section at a time.
Can I correct a message to an AI without it being answered?
Yes. A lot of what people select is a prompt for an assistant, so it reads like a request: "can you translate it on russian?" The model is told that the selection is text to correct, never a task. That one comes back as "Can you translate it into Russian?", still a question, still in English.
The check described above backs this up. A small model occasionally carries out the request anyway, and a reply in a different alphabet, or far longer than the question, is caught and discarded. The same safeguard runs on dictation cleanup, and the essay on two models per dictation explains how it decides.
What does it need?
Correct Selection is on by default. It uses the engine you chose for Cleanup, so until the cleanup model is downloaded the shortcut does nothing. If Cleanup points at a server that can't be reached, the HUD says why and the selection stays as it was.
It also needs Accessibility permission, which dictation already asks for. Dictera reads the selection through it. Where an app doesn't expose its text that way, which is common in web-based and Electron apps, Dictera copies the selection instead and puts your clipboard back before pasting.
With the built-in model, the selected text never leaves this Mac. If you pointed Cleanup at a remote model, Correct Selection follows that choice and sends the selection there. The security page covers what can be sent to a remote model, and when.
Changing the key
The shortcut lives in Settings, in the Shortcut pane, under Selected Text. You can switch it to a key combination or to a different modifier. A hold works too, and acts as a single press. The same row has the switch that turns the feature off, and Quick Controls (⌥⌘C) can toggle it without opening Settings.
The default sits on right Option because holding that key runs Translate Selection. Both selection shortcuts that don't use your voice share one key: tap twice to fix the text, hold to read it in another language.
Where it stops
- Formatting inside the selection. The correction goes in as plain text, so bold, links and colours in the selected passage don't survive it. Correct first, format after.
- Style. A clumsy but correct sentence stays clumsy. Correct Selection fixes mistakes; it doesn't improve prose.
- History. A correction isn't saved there. The undo in the app you were editing is the only copy of the original.
Where to go next
Correct Selection sits with Edit Selection and Translate Selection on the dictation page. If the mistakes it keeps fixing are names Dictera mishears when you speak them, custom replacements fix them before they reach the page.
