We study shift spaces over a finite alphabet that can be approximated by mixing shifts of finite type in the sense of (pseudo)metrics connected to Ornstein’s $\bar {d}$ metric ($\bar {d}$-approachable shift spaces). The class of $\bar {d}$-approachable shifts can be considered as a topological analog of measure-theoretical Bernoulli systems. The notion of $\bar {d}$-approachability, together with a closely connected notion of $\bar {d}$-shadowing, was introduced by Konieczny, Kupsa, and Kwietniak [Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 43(3) (2023), 943–970]. These notions were developed with the aim of significantly generalizing specification properties. Indeed, many popular variants of the specification property, including the classic one and the almost/weak specification property, ensure $\bar {d}$-approachability and $\bar {d}$-shadowing. Here, we study further properties and connections between $\bar {d}$-shadowing and $\bar {d}$-approachability. We prove that $\bar {d}$-shadowing implies $\bar {d}$-stability (a notion recently introduced by Tim Austin). We show that for surjective shift spaces with the $\bar {d}$-shadowing property the Hausdorff pseudodistance ${\bar d}^{\mathrm {H}}$ between shift spaces induced by $\bar {d}$ is the same as the Hausdorff distance between their simplices of invariant measures with respect to the Hausdorff distance induced by Ornstein’s metric $\bar {d}$ between measures. We prove that without $\bar {d}$-shadowing this need not to be true (it is known that the former distance always bounds the latter). We provide examples illustrating these results, including minimal examples and proximal examples of shift spaces with the $\bar {d}$-shadowing property. The existence of such shift spaces was announced in the earlier paper mentioned above. It shows that $\bar {d}$-shadowing indeed generalizes the specification property.

We study approximation schemes for shift spaces over a finite alphabet using (pseudo)metrics connected to Ornstein’s ${\bar d}$ metric. This leads to a class of shift spaces we call ${\bar d}$ -approachable. A shift space is ${\bar d}$ -approachable when its canonical sequence of Markov approximations converges to it also in the ${\bar d}$ sense. We give a topological characterization of chain-mixing ${\bar d}$ -approachable shift spaces. As an application we provide a new criterion for entropy density of ergodic measures. Entropy density of a shift space means that every invariant measure $\mu $ of such a shift space is the weak $^*$ limit of a sequence $\mu _n$ of ergodic measures with the corresponding sequence of entropies $h(\mu _n)$ converging to $h(\mu )$ . We prove ergodic measures are entropy-dense for every shift space that can be approximated in the ${\bar d}$ pseudometric by a sequence of transitive sofic shifts. This criterion can be applied to many examples that were beyond the reach of previously known techniques including hereditary $\mathscr {B}$ -free shifts and some minimal or proximal systems. The class of symbolic dynamical systems covered by our results includes also shift spaces where entropy density was established previously using the (almost) specification property.