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How do I add additional Dictionaries to Affinity V2?

Dan C
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Dan C

Dan C

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Affinity V2 uses the Hunspell Engine for spell checking and it also allows for additional Hunspell dictionaries to be added. You can download additional dictionaries from LibreOffice's GitHub page here but you can find direct links in the last post here. 

Once you've downloaded the correct file(s), you can use them in Affinity V2 by following the below instructions:

Please note: There are some differences between how you install Hunspell dictionaries for macOS/Windows, since we use the default spelling dictionaries available within macOS but it's also possible to add custom Hunspell dictionaries too.

macOS

macOS includes spelling dictionaries for many languages and hyphenation dictionaries for a few languages, which will already be available in Affinity V2.

To view the available spelling dictionaries, open the Character Studio within the Affinity V2 app, then expand the Language section and click the Spelling dropdown menu.
To view the list of hyphenation dictionaries, click the Hyphenation dropdown menu below Spelling in the Character Studio.

If the spelling or hyphenation language you require is not available in macOS and therefore not already listed here, you can install standard Hunspell dictionaries to use within Affinity V2.

To install a spelling dictionary, copy the required xx_XX.dic and xx_XX.aff files within Finder to:~/Library/Spelling/

To install a hyphenation dictionary, create a new subfolder in ~/Library/Spelling/
Name this subfolder using the format of xx_XX (replacing xx_XX with the language's locale id, for example fr_FR for French) and then copy the hyph_xx_XX.dic file into this folder.

If the spelling dictionary for the language you are adding a hyphenation dictionary for is already available in macOS, please do not also manually install the spelling dictionary, you should only need to manually add the hyphenation subfolder and file.

Please note: Any changes to dictionaries require that you restart Affinity V2 for these to be detected/updated.

Windows

Affinity V2 on Windows includes spelling & hyphenation dictionaries for some languages by default, though typically this is less than is available on mac, due to the use of macOS provided dictionaries, which aren't provided by Windows in the same manner.

To view the available spelling dictionaries, open the Character Studio within the Affinity V2 app, then expand the Language section and click the Spelling dropdown menu.
To view the list of hyphenation dictionaries, click the Hyphenation dropdown menu below Spelling in the Character Studio.

If the spelling or hyphenation language you require is not provided with Affinity V2 on Windows and therefore not already listed here, you can install standard Hunspell dictionaries to use within Affinity V2.

You can add additional dictionaries and hyphenation dictionaries by going to Edit > Settings > Tools.
The default Additional dictionary folder used by the app is C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\2.0\Dictionaries but you can change this location by clicking Browse...

It is not necessary to change this default folder location within the Affinity V2 app, but if you do, please make sure that you specify a folder here that holds all subfolders for each locale and not one specific locale folder as this will not work!

To copy any downloaded dictionaries and hyphenation dictionaries to the Additional dictionary folder click Open... but before copying your files to this folder you will need to create a subfolder with its name in the format of xx_XX ( substituting xx_XX for the locale id ). Once you’ve done this you can copy your xx_XX.dic, xx_XX.aff and hyph_xx_XX.dic files to the subfolder. Now restart Affinity V2 for the dictionaries to appear within the app.
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For example, with the default folder used under Settings > Tools, you should see this folder path within the Affinity V2 app and not a specific locale folder:

C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\2.0\Dictionaries

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You should then have created a folder within the 'Dictionaries' folder in File Explorer, using the locale ID - for example with English Canadian:

C:\ProgramData\Affinity\Common\2.0\Dictionaries\en_CA

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Within this folder should be the relevant .dic, .aff & hyph.dic files, downloaded from the post below. This should appear as follows 

image.png

Please note: Any changes to dictionaries require that you restart AffinityV2 for these to be detected/updated.

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  • 2 months later...
Dan C

Dan C

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Known Issues -

French (Canadian), French (Belgium), French (Luxembourg) & French (Swiss)

When importing text from external apps, such as Word or LibreOffice, that use these languages, Affinity will show a warning for a missing dictionary.

From our research, individual Spelling/Hyphenation dictionaries do not exist online for these languages, so instead it appears as though these third party apps will simply use a French (French) dictionary in order to provide Spelling/Hyphenation support, assumedly through the use of symlinks.

As the Affinity apps don't currently support symlinks for dictionaries, we instead recommend manually installing the French dictionaries from the above provided links, but changing the Language code of the downloaded files and folders as required.

For example, if you see a warning regarding a missing fr_CA (French (Canadian)) dictionary when importing text, please download the above fr.aff, fr.dic & hyph_fr.dic files.
Once downloaded, rename these files to fr_CA.aff, fr_CA.dic & hyph_fr_CA.dic respectively and then add them to the required location/language folder on your OS, using the above instructions.

These steps are also true for the other languages listed above, substituting the language code (fr_CA, fr_BE, fr_LU or fr_CH) as required.

Once you have installed the French dictionary files using these language codes, you should find the relevant Spelling/Hyphenation options can now be selected in Affinity and the missing dictionary warning is no longer shown.

German (Swiss), German (Austrian) & Belorussian

When downloading dictionaries for the above languages, some of these files have filenames which require amending.

For German (Swiss) and German (Austrian), the files are suffixed with '_frami'.

For Belarussian, the files are suffixed with '_official'.

Before installing the dictionaries for these languages, we recommend deleting these suffixes and not including them within the language code for any folders created.

For example:
German Swiss files are named 'de_CH_frami'. After downloading, rename the file(s) to 'de_CH'  and create the folder using this code.
Belarussian files are named 'be_official'. After downloading, rename the file(s) to 'be' and create the folder using this code.

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Dan C

Dan C

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Please find below direct links to the Hunspell dictionaries. To download a file, right click the link and select Save Link As...
(In Safari, select Download Linked File As... but do not select Download Linked File or .txt will be appended to the filename.)
 

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  • 6 months later...
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DWright

DWright

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MacOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Change to the Learnt Dictionary location

In the recent MacOS 14.4.1 update Apple have changed the location of where the learned words in the Affinity apps are stored, the learned word are now written to a file that corresponds to your Mac default language for example for UK English the file is called en_GB and this can be found in the location

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.AppleSpell/Library/Spelling/

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