Dictation not working on your Mac

Try these three first: turn Dictation off and on in System Settings → Keyboard, check which microphone Dictation is set to on the same screen, and make sure Voice Control is off. If that did not do it, find your symptom below.

Checked on macOS 26.6 (Tahoe), Apple Silicon, 28 September 2026. The settings paths match Apple’s own guide for macOS 27.

1. Dictation is off, or the shortcut does something else

System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation. If it is on and still does nothing, switch it off and on again — that is the first step in every guide, Apple’s included, because it works more often than it should.

Then look at the Shortcut menu on the same screen: the Microphone key where the keyboard has one, a double press of Fn (🌐), or a combination of your own. If the Fn key has been given another job — System Settings → Keyboard → “Press 🌐 key to” — or a remapping tool such as Karabiner has taken it, the shortcut never reaches Dictation. Choose a different shortcut and try again. You can also start it from the menu: Edit → Start Dictation. How to dictate on a Mac, from the start.

2. It is listening for a different language

Dictation recognises one language at a time: the one selected in Keyboard → Dictation. Speak Spanish to an English dictation and it will still produce English words, confidently. If you added several languages, check which one is active, and remove the ones you do not use.

3. Dictation is using a different microphone

Dictation has its own microphone setting, separate from the one in Sound. Keyboard → Dictation → Microphone source. On “Automatic” it picks the device it thinks you are most likely to use, which after plugging in a display, a dock or a headset may not be the one in front of you. Pick the microphone by name.

4. The microphone is producing silence, not quiet audio

This looks like a recognition problem and is not one. Two ways it happens:

• Bluetooth headphones in listening mode. AirPods and most headsets sit in an output-only Bluetooth profile that carries no microphone. macOS still reports a valid input device with a plausible sample rate, and recording produces a buffer of exact zeros. Everything looks fine; nothing was heard.
• Audio interfaces and virtual devices. On a multichannel or aggregate device — a mixer, BlackHole, Loopback, a meeting app’s virtual mic — the software may be reading a channel your microphone is not wired to, and that channel is silent.

Test: open System Settings → Sound → Input and watch the level meter while you speak. No movement means the device, not the software. Switch to the built-in microphone, in Sound and in fix 3, before changing anything else. If the meter moves but only a little, raise the input volume on the same screen.

5. Voice Control is holding the audio

Voice Control (System Settings → Accessibility → Voice Control) takes the input for its own commands, and it can be left on by an accessibility shortcut nobody remembers pressing. While it is on, dictation — Apple’s and anyone else’s — can end up with nothing to hear.

Check: if Voice Control is on and you did not turn it on, that is your answer.

6. Permission was granted to a different copy of the app

This one is for third-party dictation apps. macOS binds Microphone, Accessibility and Input Monitoring permissions to the app’s signature, not its name. Update it to a copy that was signed differently and every permission is silently revoked — the app is still listed in System Settings, still ticked, and still denied.

Fix: remove the app from each list in System Settings → Privacy & Security, then add it again. Toggling the switch is often not enough; delete the entry. While you are there, check that the app you are dictating into is not the one missing from Microphone.

7. The speech service is stuck

If the shortcut does nothing at all, or the microphone icon appears and never goes away, restart the process that runs speech recognition. In Terminal:

killall corespeechd

It needs no sudo, and macOS starts it again by itself — on the Mac this page was checked on, within two seconds. If that does not help, restart the Mac.

Some guides go further and tell you to disable System Integrity Protection with csrutil disable. Do not. It has nothing to do with dictation, and it switches off one of the main protections macOS has.

8. It needs the network, and there is not one

Not every language, and not every Mac, recognises speech on the device. Apple’s own troubleshooting list includes checking the internet connection. Keyboard → Dictation says whether your voice input is processed on the Mac or sent to Apple; if it is sent, dictation stops working the moment the connection does.

9. Secure input is on, so the text is blocked rather than missing

This one is invisible and it explains the strangest reports: dictation works, the app says it succeeded, and nothing appears.

When any application holds “secure input” — a password field, a password manager, some terminal emulators, and sometimes a background app that never let go — macOS blocks synthetic keystrokes system-wide. Dictation tools that insert text by simulating a paste are silently refused. Nothing errors.

Find the culprit:

ioreg -l -w 0 | grep SecureInput

No output means nothing holds it, and this is not your problem. Otherwise the kCGSSessionSecureInputPID value is the process id holding it. Look it up with ps -p <pid>. Quitting that app releases the hold; logging out always does.

10. It stops after 30 seconds

That is by design. In Apple’s words, dictation “stops automatically when no speech is detected for 30 seconds”, and there is no setting for it. If it stops while you are still talking, go back to fix 4 — the input has probably gone silent, and the timeout is just what you noticed.

11. It does not work in one particular app

Try the same dictation in TextEdit. If it works there, the problem is the target app, not your Mac.

• Chrome, Electron apps and some Java applications answer the accessibility system unreliably, which is where dictation gets confused about whether a text field is focused. Click into the field again before you start.
• Terminal and password fields — see fix 9, and dictating to Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.
• Microsoft Word’s Dictate button and Google Docs’ voice typing are separate features belonging to Microsoft and Google. If one of those fails, macOS settings will not fix it; the app’s own microphone permission, in Privacy & Security → Microphone, might.

12. Someone else switched it off

On a work or school Mac, a configuration profile can disable Dictation entirely, and the switch in Keyboard settings then does nothing or is missing. System Settings → General → Device Management lists the profiles installed. Screen Time content restrictions can do the same on a family Mac. Neither is something to work around; ask whoever manages the Mac.

Questions

How do I reset dictation on a Mac?

Turn Dictation off and on again in System Settings → Keyboard, then restart the speech service with killall corespeechd in Terminal. It needs no sudo and macOS starts it again within seconds.

Why does dictation stop after 30 seconds on my Mac?

Apple’s dictation stops automatically when no speech is detected for 30 seconds, and there is no setting to change it. If it stops while you are still speaking, the microphone is most likely delivering silence.

Why does dictation not type anything into Terminal?

Secure input. When any app holds secure input — a password field, some terminals, some password managers — macOS blocks synthetic keystrokes, so dictated text silently fails to appear.

Why does my external microphone not work with dictation?

Dictation has its own microphone setting, separate from Sound → Input. Check Keyboard → Dictation → Microphone source. Bluetooth headsets in output-only mode also report a valid input that produces pure silence.

How do I stop dictation on a Mac?

Press Escape, the Microphone key if your keyboard has one, or the dictation shortcut again.