Occasionally you need to check the spelling of words in an application that does not include a spelling checker and you don't want to launch your word processor just for that. This is when tinySpell becomes handy. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check the spelling of words in any application.

tinySpell can watch your typing on the fly and alert you whenever it detects a misspelled word. It can also check the spelling of text you copy to the clipboard. After invoking tinySpell, it installs itself in the system tray for easy access (you’ll see a small icon  or  in the tray). Normally the icon is white but it turns to yellow when a misspelled word is detected. Clicking the yellow tinySpell icon, or pressing the hot-key, pops up a list of suggested replacement words from which you can select a correction. You can set tinySpell to insert the selected word into your document or copy it to the clipboard (or both).

tinySpell comes with an American-English dictionary containing more than 110,000 words. For a small donation you can change this to a UK dictionary. A highly useful program!

For news and updates: right-click the tinySpell icon and select www.tinyspell.com.