demo · v143

Spellcheck Restriction

In v143 Chrome suppresses spell/grammar highlights until the user has actually interacted with the field. Below: two fields with deliberately misspelled text. The right one is autofocused on load and starts pre-populated. Pre-v143 both showed red squiggles immediately; in v143 the right one stays clean until you click or type. The log records focus & interaction events.

field A — never autofocused

no user interaction yet

field B — autofocused on load

autofocus triggered

event log

Look at the highlight state of each textarea over time. In Chrome 143+, field B should stay free of squiggles until you click or type into it; field A behaves normally because it requires you to focus it anyway.

the behaviour

// No new API surface — Chrome 143 changes when spellcheck
// highlights render. A textarea with spellcheck="true"
// now requires real user interaction (pointer / key)
// before the browser starts spell-checking, even if it
// was programmatically focused.

// Mitigation: rely on real user input.
<textarea spellcheck="true">…</textarea>

see also