Is it possible to disable spell check systemwide?

I've just done a clean install of Yosemite, and in practically all of my apps I'm noticing those red underlines whenever I've "misspelled" something (or, more accurately, used an unrecognized name, technical term, piece of code, etc.). I have been disabling it app by app, although even then it doesn't always work - for example, when doing Google searches in Chrome it still shows up, even though I've disabled "check spelling while typing."

I've also gone to System Preferences/Keyboard/Text and unchecked "Correct spelling automatically," but this still doesn't seem to do anything.

Has something gone wrong on my system? And is there any more reliable way to completely disable this unwanted "feature?"


Renaming '/System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Resources' did not work for me since that file doesn't seem to exist on this install (10.11). What did work was disabling it for the languages I usually write in, under System Preferences->Keyboard->Text->Spelling select menu. It's set to 'Automatic by Language' by default, choose 'Set up…' at the bottom and deselect your languages. Restart the applications that use the Spelling service.


Rename the contents of the AppleSpell service to append .disabled, then kill AppleSpell.

sudo mv /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Resources \
        /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/Resources.disabled
killall AppleSpell