Not seeing squiggles / decorations on spelling errors in the editor (squiggles issue only)

[arturmarc]

At some point I stopped seeing the "squiggles" in the editor.
i.e. I don't see this:

instead I have all other functionality - suggesting fixes, the spell checker window etc..
but no squiggles in the editor:

I have tried enabling "custom decorators" as well - they don't show up either. I also tried:

• played around with some settings
• re-installing the extension
• downgrading the extension

I am pretty sure if I re-install my vscode from scratch, it will work since I tried a fresh "portable" install and it works just fine.

It seems like it's probably one those issues that happened during one of the vscode's or extension's upgrade, maybe some old settings is messing with it or some other extension 🤷‍♂️

I am trying to avoid the risk and disruption of the full re-install and wondering if there is something else I can try ?

[Jason3S]

@arturmarc,

That is frustrating.
What OS are you using?
I am assuming you have restarted VS Code.

The fact that it makes suggestions, implies that it is detecting the spell error, just not displaying it.

I'm guessing it is one of the settings.

Does it happen in all workspaces or only just one?

If it happens in all, then it is most likely a User setting.

If you can open the settings.json file and share any settings that start with "cSpell., it would help. No need to share word lists.

Any like this:

[arturmarc]

I am on mac os (recently updated to v15 but the problem was there before).
I had this problem for a while, so I upgraded and restarted multiple times already..

The problem happens in all workspaces.
I have played around with enabling various settings for cspell but figured best to leave all default so no specific cSpell settings other than "userWords".
I can share my whole settings json basically if that helps:

{
  "[typescriptreact]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "gitlens.hovers.currentLine.over": "line",
  "workbench.editor.enablePreviewFromCodeNavigation": true,
  "workbench.editor.limit.value": 12,
  "workbench.editor.revealIfOpen": true,
  "workbench.editor.limit.perEditorGroup": true,
  "[typescript]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "gitlens.hovers.enabled": false,
  "git.openDiffOnClick": false,
  "cSpell.userWords": [
    "...",    
  ],
  "[javascript]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "javascript.inlayHints.functionLikeReturnTypes.enabled": true,
  // "editor.codeActionsOnSave": {
  //     "source.organizeImports": true
  // },
  "[html]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "typescript.updateImportsOnFileMove.enabled": "always",
  "[scss]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "yaml.schemas": {
    "file:///.../atlassian.atlascode-3.0.15/resources/schemas/pipelines-schema.json": "bitbucket-pipelines.yml"
  },
  "atlascode.bitbucket.pipelines.monitorEnabled": false,
  "[jsonc]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "[json]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "[astro]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "astro-build.astro-vscode"
  },
  "javascript.preferences.useAliasesForRenames": false,
  "typescript.preferences.useAliasesForRenames": false,
  "editor.inlineSuggest.enabled": true,
  "editor.linkedEditing": true,
  "javascript.preferences.importModuleSpecifier": "relative",
  "typescript.preferences.importModuleSpecifier": "relative",
  "explorer.autoRevealExclude": {
    "**/node_modules": false,
    "**/node_modulesss": true
  },
  "scm.autoReveal": false,
  "[css]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode"
  },
  "[njk]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "douglaszaltron.nunjucks-vscode-extensionpack"
  },
  "diffEditor.ignoreTrimWhitespace": false,
  "editor.formatOnSave": true,
  "editor.codeActionsOnSave": {
    "source.organizeImports": "never"
  },
  "supermaven.enable": {
    "*": true
  },
  "supermaven.enableFixWithSupermaven": false,
  "workbench.editor.limit.enabled": true,
  "files.autoSave": "onFocusChange",
  "emmet.includeLanguages": {
    "javascript": "javascriptreact",
    "typewscript": "javascriptreact"
  },
  "search.exclude": {
    "**/.next": true,
    "**/dist": true
  },
  "editor.pasteAs.preferences": ["text.updateImports"],
  "typescript.experimental.expandableHover": true
}

[Jason3S]

@arturmarc,

I tried your settings and things still work for me.

Would you try adding the following to your settings:

    "cSpell.textDecorationThickness": "2px",
    "cSpell.textDecorationColor": "#ff8f34",
    "cSpell.useCustomDecorations": true,
    "cSpell.textDecorationStyle": "wavy",

It will make the issues really stand out with orange squiggles:

[arturmarc]

I've tried that.. no joy :(
I don't think it's an appearance problem, it looks like this part of the extension's functionality is just wotking .. either is not starting up or it died or malfunctioning 🤷‍♂️

I also looked at the logs (show logs -> extension host), but the only cSpell thing I see there is this warning:
[warning] DiagnosticCollection with name 'cSpell' does already exist.
Doesn't seem like it's related, but maybe ?

I think this is something pretty obscure :( . My editor must have gotten into a "weird" state after un upgrade or because of some other extension or smth, and it's causing this bug.

I tried disabling most of my extensions as well, but does not help.

I guess if there is no cached file to delete or something else to reload, I will just go with re-installing my vs-code route 😮‍💨. Or do you have any other ideas ?

[Jason3S]

@arturmarc,

Restart VS Code

Have you restarted VSCode recently? It is acting like something is stuck running.

1. Quit VS Code.

2. Check the Activity Monitor for an VS Code processes that are still running.
   

3. Kill them.

4. start VS Code.

Manual Cleanup of Extension

The other option, is that the extension didn't correctly install. This can occasionally happen. But it requires you to delete the extension manually.

rm -rf ~/.vscode/extensions/streetsidesoftware.code-spell-checker-*

[heinwol]

Have the same issue after update of vscode to 1.96.0 and maybe a following update of cSpell to 4.0.21. Tried solutions of @Jason3S, didn't help, as well as with the gui way to uninstalling extensions. The same warning in extension host as @arturmarc encountered:

[warning] DiagnosticCollection with name 'cSpell' does already exist.

I haven't tried removing all user config and cache for vscode for now.

[Jason3S]

@heinwol,

Did you try restarting quitting VS Code and see if there were any Code Helpers still running? I would like to find out the cause of the issue.

[heinwol]

@Jason3S thank you for your desire to help, I appreciate it! Yes, i removed the extension after having ensured all code processes died. Well, didn't help.

Actually, I changed my mind and removed all user config/cache for vscode, namely

~/.cache/vscode-cpptools/
~/.config/Code/
~/.vscode/

After that cSpell (including settings for custom decorations) worked correctly. I had to tweak some non-synced settings of course. Nonetheless, I believe it's a reasonable tradeoff: just 7 minutes of messing with settings and I'm all ready to go.

[Jason3S]

@heinwol,

I wonder what the setting was that stopped it from working.

[heinwol]

@Jason3S I don't think it's in settings.json as this is mostly synced via vscode -- and after reinstall this file appeared to be practically unchanged. Maybe it was some cache in ~/.vscode, or other extension, can't say more precisely.