How to make LanguageTool visible in Google Docs Pageless Mode

By enabling the outline view, you will bring back the LanguageTool check button.

LanguageTool, a robust, extremely popular grammar checking and rewriting Chrome extension, is available in a Google Docs Pageless Mode since December 2022.

However, the extension’s features in this writing mode are limited and randomly available. It’s related to the problem with anchoring the extension to the text.

The biggest issue is the visibility of the LT check button. In a Google Docs Page Mode, it sits on the left margin of the page. When you switch to the Pageless Mode, the button goes off the display (see the screenshot below).

There is an easy trick to make the button visible. Here is how to do it.

A trick to make the LanguageTool button visible in a Google Docs Pageless Mode

1. Start typing “outline” in the “Search the menus” box, and select “Show outline” from a dropdown menu.

2. Close the outline view by clicking the left arrow in the top-left corner of the outline panel.

From now on, you can see the LT button in the Google Docs Pageless Mode. 

You may ask: “Why can’t you just go back to the Page Mode?”. Well, I hate the page layout mode. It resembles old, unfriendly text editors, and it discourages me from writing.

The Pageless Mode makes Google Docs look and feel like new-generation workspaces, such as Notion. And it was the main reason for sticking to Google Docs when I closed my Notion account.

Note: Until LanguageTool releases a fix, the sentence rewriter works in Google Docs Pageless Mode only in the first section. In the next section or sections, it either works or not, and this is totally random.

Let’s hope one day the LanguageTool team find a way to increase the usability of the LT Chrome extension in the Google Docs Pageless Mode. I praise the LT for giving accurate spelling suggestions and for a wonderful AI sentence rewriter option.

Keep exploring. Here are other lists and tips for geeks: