In the week that we learned that Scrabble is coming in a new ‘less competitive’ edition, it’s only appropriate to take a look at another of those former heroes in macOS, the bundled Dictionary app. With autocompletion and on-tap translation services in Sonoma, does it still have a role, or is it just a relic of the past?

Dictionary is now an old corner of macOS, dating back to 10.4 in 2005, and for many may seem long superseded by online services. The great advantages of Dictionary are that most of its sources are stored locally, that they’re reputable, and completely free. There’s also a multitude of different ways in which you can look words up in Dictionary. These include ⌃⌘D (control-command-D), a three-finger tap on a Trackpad, drag and drop, the Services menu, the Finder contextual menu, dict:/// in a browser, and Spotlight search.

Dictionary combines two functions. For local dictionaries that are indexed and compiled into DICT format, it searches and loads entries from local data. It also provides access to internet sources such as Wikipedia, pulled in and rejigged for Dictionary’s interface using Java and style sheets (CSS). Although you can add local dictionaries, there doesn’t appear to be any way of adding online sources, other than those provided for in Dictionary’s Preferences.

Local dictionaries in Apple’s standard format can be installed in /Library/Dictionaries for all users, or in ~/Library/Dictionaries for just the current user. There’s even a menu command in the Dictionary app to open the latter folder for you in the Finder, to make this simpler. Apple offers an extensive set covering many languages and subjects, selected from and ordered in its Settings dialog. Note that Wikipedia is available in many different languages too: choose your options from the lower section when Wikipedia is selected above.

Some dictionaries offer other options, such as the system for indicating pronunciation, and display orientation.

Although there are other commercial dictionary apps, and some that work with the Dictionary app itself, I’m not aware of any commercial dictionaries extending the Dictionary app.

My favourite English dictionary apps include the following.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) app is sadly too old to run on anything later than macOS Mojave, lacks all the latest additions, and has been long since abandoned in favour of online subscription access, which is prohibitively expensive for most potential users.

The Shorter OED and Collins dictionary apps are available from the App Store.

Building your own dictionary is a major task that may not even be possible any more. You’ll not only need a lot of source material which is easily reformatted (using scripts or a tool) into the required XML, but the Additional Tools for Xcode, which are only available to registered Apple developers. Within those has been Apple’s Dictionary Development Kit, containing documentation, project templates, samples, and command tools to put it all together. These are discussed in the Dictionary Services Programming Guide, which is long defunct and no longer being updated.

Oddly, although iOS includes dictionaries, it doesn’t have a Dictionary app as such, but provides them as a service. Because you can’t access its system folders, you can only install from the standard range of dictionaries, unless your device is jailbroken. All the third-party iOS dictionaries that I have come across seem to be separate apps.

How much longer macOS will continue to feature its Dictionary app is uncertain, but for the time being it’s still one of its lesser-known gems.