Grammarly
Grammarly checks spelling, grammar and tone, and offers AI help with drafting and rewriting. It’s made by Grammarly, based in the United States.
Criminals have used its name in fake downloads or scams, so get it only from grammarly.com.
What it is
People use Grammarly to check emails, schoolwork and documents. Its Mac app offers suggestions inside supported apps and websites. The desktop app comes from Grammarly’s website. Its Mac App Store offering is a Safari extension.
Grammarly needs Accessibility access to read and change text where you write. It sends text to its servers for checking. Grammarly says it tries to exclude passwords and credit card details, but describes this protection as best effort.
You can turn Grammarly off for particular apps and websites. Its privacy policy says account settings control whether your content can be used to train its AI models. Grammarly says it does not sell your writing.
Who makes it
Grammarly is a writing software company founded in 2009 and now a subsidiary of Superhuman Platform Inc. Its legal name is Grammarly Inc.. Its website is grammarly.com.
Is it the real one?
Every Mac app carries a signature from the developer who made it. Apple checks who the developer is before handing out the certificate, and macOS refuses to open an app whose signature has been tampered with.
HARD hasn’t yet recorded the signature on a real copy of Grammarly. Its Mac app shows who signed the copy you have.
Its bundle ID, the name macOS knows it by, is com.grammarly.ProjectLlama or com.grammarly.safari.extension. Download it only from grammarly.com or the Mac App Store, not from an ad or a link someone sends you.
Fakes. In October 2023, Elastic reported fake Grammarly installers spreading GHOSTPULSE malware on Windows. In March 2026, Guardio reported scammers using Grammarly-hosted pages and Google ads to direct Mac users to Terminal commands that installed information-stealing malware.
What it connects to
In normal use, Grammarly talks to these places on the internet. A firewall that asks before apps connect, like the one in HARD’s Mac app, will show them.
| Address | Why |
|---|---|
*.grammarly.com | Connections to Grammarly’s servers. |
*.grammarly.io | Connections to Grammarly’s servers. |
*.grammarly.net | Connections to Grammarly’s servers. |
What it can see
macOS asks you before an app can use these. You can change them any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
| Permission | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | Reads text and applies writing suggestions in supported apps. |
| Device Control and Data Access | On macOS 27 and later, this replaces the Accessibility setting and covers the events needed to apply suggestions. |
Security record
Problems with Grammarly or Grammarly in the last three years, newest first. Keeping the app up to date covers the ones that were fixed.
| When | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Researchers disclosed flaws that could leak private content from Superhuman’s AI tools, including Grammarly’s AI documents; fixes were deployed before disclosure. | ↗ |
References
- How to deploy Grammarly for Mac support.grammarly.com
- Grammarly for Safari bundle information doesitarm.com
- About Grammarly grammarly.com
- Superhuman Privacy Policy superhuman.com
- Grammarly for Mac grammarly.com
- Grammarly: AI Writing App — Mac App Store apps.apple.com
- Does Grammarly’s product read everything I write? support.grammarly.com
- How to choose where Grammarly for Windows and Mac works support.grammarly.com
- Grammarly User Trust Center grammarly.com
- Grammarly for Mac’s background processes overview support.grammarly.com
- How do I update the extension to the latest version? support.grammarly.com
- Grammarly and Superhuman Go bug resolution updates and release notes support.grammarly.com
- Error: Can’t connect to Grammarly or Something went wrong support.grammarly.com
- GHOSTPULSE haunts victims using defense evasion bag o’ tricks elastic.co
- Googled a Mac Storage Fix Lately? It May Be a Scam guard.io
- Superhuman AI Exfiltrates Emails promptarmor.com