Dictation and Voice to Text on iPhone and Android

You do not need to install anything to dictate on a phone. Every iPhone and iPad has Apple Dictation in its keyboard, every Android phone has Google voice typing in Gboard, Samsung Galaxy phones add a second engine called Samsung voice input, and Apple Watch has a microphone button in every text field. You turn the feature on once, tap the microphone key and talk. On an iPhone, Apple says Dictation is processed on the device in many languages and that no internet connection is required ¹. On Android, Google's 2019 Gboard recognizer is about 80 MB and works while the phone is offline, first on Pixel phones in American English ².

The reason to bother is speed. In a controlled study on an iPhone, English text entered by speech reached 153 words per minute, against 52 on the built-in keyboard ^{3 4}. When it fails, the cause is usually a setting rather than the microphone hardware. It is a switch that is off, a permission that was refused, another keyboard that is active, or a language file that is not on the phone. This page gives the whole subject in one place and links to a guide for every part of it.

The short version

Speaking is faster than typing on a phone

The most cited measurement comes from a Stanford and University of Washington study. Participants entered short messages on an iPhone by speech and with the iOS keyboard. Speech was 2.93 times faster in English, 153 against 52 words per minute ³, and in Mandarin Chinese it reached 123 words per minute against 43 on the Pinyin keyboard ^{5 6}. At the English speeds in that study, typing 1,000 words on the phone keyboard takes about 12.7 minutes longer than speaking them, before any editing ⁷.

The 52 words per minute in that study is a laboratory figure for short messages. A separate online study of 37,370 volunteers entering text on mobile devices in a web-based task measured an average of 36.2 words per minute, with 2.3 percent uncorrected errors ⁸. People who typed with both thumbs, over 74 percent of the volunteers, were faster than those using one thumb or an index finger ⁹. The two studies used different tasks and people, so their figures are not directly comparable.

Speed is not the whole story, and the authors are careful about it. Speech produced fewer errors during entry (a 5.30 percent corrected error rate against 11.22 percent for the keyboard) but left slightly more errors in the final text, 1.30 percent against 0.79 percent ¹⁰. In plain terms, you correct less while you talk, but you must still proofread. The authors also note that results outside the laboratory still need study ¹¹, and that the best speech recognition has greatly improved compared with earlier systems ¹². Our guide to dictation versus typing and the typing speed overview go further into the research.

iPhone and iPad: one switch in Settings, then the microphone key

On an iPhone you open Settings > General > Keyboard, turn on Enable Dictation and confirm the prompt ¹³. After that, a microphone key appears on the keyboard in every text field. Tap it, speak, and tap again to stop. Dictation also stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech ¹⁴.

Two details make iPhone dictation better than people expect. First, the keyboard stays open during dictation, so you can switch between touch and voice in the same message ¹⁵: speak a paragraph, tap to fix one word, and carry on speaking. Second, in supported languages the iPhone inserts commas, periods and question marks as you speak, without a spoken command ¹⁶. If you prefer to control punctuation yourself, you can turn it off under Settings > General > Keyboard > Auto-Punctuation ¹⁷.

Newer software changes the engine. Apple says that with Apple Intelligence in iOS 27, iPhone dictation uses an on-device model to improve spelling, punctuation and capitalization, in English on iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air or later ¹⁸. That note covers only English and the iPhone models it names.

The full walkthrough, with the menu names for each iOS version, is in our guide to dictation on iPhone. The questions people ask most are answered separately:

• What is dictation on iPhone?
• How do you turn off dictation on iPhone?
• How do you remove the dictation button on iPhone?
• How do you dictate notes on iPhone?
• Is dictation better in iOS 27?

iPad is the same feature with a bigger screen

iPad dictation is the same Apple Dictation as on the iPhone, and Android tablets use the same voice keyboards as Android phones. What changes is how you start and edit: an attached hardware keyboard, split-screen multitasking and the Apple Pencil all alter the workflow, and a tablet suits long documents better than a phone does. Our guide to dictation on iPad and Android tablets covers the differences, including how Word, Google Docs and Pages handle dictation. Microsoft says Dictation in Microsoft 365 needs a microphone and a reliable internet connection ¹⁹, which is worth knowing before you plan to dictate a Word document on a train. See dictating in Word on a phone or iPad, why dictation is not working on an iPad and the best dictation app for iPad.

Android: the microphone key in Gboard is Google voice typing

On almost every Android phone, talk to text is the microphone at the top of Gboard. Google says you voice type by tapping a text field, tapping the microphone and speaking when you see "Speak now" ²⁰. The first time, Android asks for a recording permission with three choices: While using app, Only this time or Don't allow ²¹. Choosing the last one blocks voice typing until you change the permission in the phone's app settings, so the fix is a settings change, not a repair ²¹.

Google voice typing used to need a data connection because the recognizer was too large for a phone: Google said its traditional server-side recognizer used a search graph of almost 2 GB ²². In 2019 Google announced an end-to-end, all-neural, on-device recognizer to power speech input in Gboard ²³, and it was small enough, about 80 MB, to run on the phone ². A history of the keyboard dates the addition of offline voice recognition to March 2019 ²⁴. The speech engine itself is a separate app, Speech Services by Google, which matters when you troubleshoot.

Voice typing works in any app that shows the keyboard. Google Docs also has its own voice typing under Tools > Voice typing in a supported browser ²⁵, a different route to the same Google engine. Our guide to voice typing on Android gives exact steps for Pixel and other phones, and the common questions have their own pages:

• Where is voice typing on Android?
• How do you dictate punctuation on Android?
• What voice commands work with Gboard voice typing?
• Can you use Gboard voice typing on iPhone?
• How do you dictate notes on Android?

Samsung Galaxy phones have two voice engines to choose from

Samsung says Galaxy phones and tablets have two built-in voice-to-text apps, Samsung voice input and Google Voice Typing, and that Samsung voice input works only with the Samsung Keyboard ²⁶. So on a Galaxy the question is not "does it have voice typing" but "which of the two is doing the work". If you have replaced Samsung Keyboard with Gboard, you get Google's engine; if you use Samsung Keyboard, you can pick either.

Offline use follows the same pattern as on other Android phones: Samsung's keyboard settings have an Offline voice input section where you install offline language packs ²⁷. The Samsung guide explains which languages work offline. The guide to talk to text on Samsung Galaxy covers where the voice button sits in each One UI version, how to switch engines, and how Galaxy AI turns a Voice Recorder recording into text through Transcript Assist ²⁸, a feature that is only on select Galaxy models ²⁹. Related questions:

• Why is the voice input button missing on Samsung Keyboard?
• Is Samsung voice input or Google voice typing better?
• Why is talk to text not working on my Samsung?
• How do you turn a voice recording into text on Samsung?

Compare the built-in voice keyboards side by side

The built-in tools are similar in what they do and different in where the settings live. This table uses only what the platform makers document.

The "Not stated by Apple" cell is deliberate. Apple's watchOS guide says only that dictation is not available in all languages ³¹; it does not say whether the watch or the cloud does the recognizing.

Say punctuation, formatting and emoji and the phone types them

Voice typing is faster when you know a few spoken commands. On iPhone you add punctuation by saying the name of the mark, for example "exclamation point" ³². Apple's list includes period, comma, exclamation point, question mark, dollar sign and parentheses ³³. Saying "new line" or "new paragraph" adds a line break ³⁴, "Cap" capitalizes the next word ³⁵, and you can spell a word by saying its letters, which helps with names ³⁶. Not every command exists in every language: the "No space" command, for instance, is not available for all of them ³⁷.

Apple Watch has a small command set of its own. You can say emoji by name ³⁸, tap a dictated word and say a different one to replace it, and double-tap the screen to select all ³⁹. Gboard has its own spoken commands, listed in the question on Gboard voice typing commands.

The complete table of commands, including emoji and editing, is in the iPhone dictation commands guide. Questions with their own pages:

• How do you dictate punctuation on iPhone?
• How do you add emoji with iPhone dictation?
• How do you delete the last word with iPhone dictation?
• Why does iPhone dictation spell my name wrong?

For the same topic on a computer, see dictation punctuation and the wider dictation overview.

Many languages run on the phone, and the setup differs by platform

On iPhone, dictation languages follow your keyboards: add a keyboard in a language and dictation in that language becomes available, and you switch between them from the keyboard. On Android, the languages are chosen inside the voice keyboard itself (Gboard or Samsung Keyboard). Which languages work offline differs by platform and language, and mixing two languages in one sentence works only in some setups. On Apple Watch, Apple's guide says that if you have set up more than one language, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to switch ⁴⁰.

The guide to dictation languages on iPhone and Android gives the steps and the caveats for Indian, Arabic and other non-Latin scripts. The questions people search for:

• Why is my dictation language not showing on iPhone?
• Can iPhone dictation understand two languages at once?
• Why does iPhone dictation type in the wrong language?
• Can you dictate in Hindi and other Indian languages on iPhone?

Language support is also a subject in its own right. See our overview of languages and accents in speech recognition for how accuracy varies across them.

Offline voice typing works on both platforms once the language is on the phone

Offline dictation has two benefits: it works on a plane or in a basement, and the audio does not need to leave the phone. It has a catch on each platform. On iPhone, Apple says Dictation runs on the device in many languages with no internet connection required ¹, but a search field is an exception: when you dictate in a search field, the text may be sent to the search engine to process the search ⁴¹. On Android, a February 2025 report says Gboard's offline voice typing works on all devices ³⁰, and Samsung keyboards keep offline language packs in their Offline voice input section ²⁷. And on Windows, the comparison point, Microsoft says voice typing needs an internet connection ⁴².

A practical check is airplane mode. Turn it on, open a note, dictate a sentence, and if text appears the recognition is running on the phone. If it fails, the language is not downloaded. The offline voice typing guide gives the setup for Apple Dictation, Gboard, Samsung and Apple Watch and lists the features that still need a connection. Related pages:

• Does iPhone dictation work offline?
• What is the best offline speech to text app for Android?
• Is iPhone dictation private?

On the Mac, the equivalent feature is covered in our guide to Dictation on Mac and in the free offline dictation page for Mac.

Phone keyboards are private only as far as the keyboard processes speech on the phone

Where your speech is processed decides how private it is. Apple says that your device shows in Keyboard settings whether dictated audio and transcripts are processed on the device or sent to Apple servers ⁴³. When dictation is sent to Apple's servers, Apple says it is not stored unless you opt in to Improve Siri and Dictation ⁴⁴, and for people who do opt in, only Apple's own employees, under confidentiality obligations, can access the audio ⁴⁵. Apple also says it links Siri and Dictation request history, including transcripts, to a random rotating identifier rather than your Apple Account, and may keep it for up to two years ⁴⁶.

Third-party keyboards are a different case. Apple's developer documentation says a custom keyboard runs in a sandbox that by default disallows access to the network ⁴⁷. The Allow Full Access switch is what lifts that limit, and Apple's warning, as TechCrunch quoted it in 2014, is blunt: if you enable Full Access, developers are permitted to access, collect and transmit the data you type ⁴⁸. That does not mean every such keyboard does so. It means the privacy of a third-party keyboard depends on its developer's policy, not on the platform. The deeper treatment is in the voice privacy overview.

On Android, the equivalent control is permission to record: the microphone is only used when you grant the permission you saw in the Gboard prompt ²¹.

When voice typing fails, check the setting before the microphone

Troubleshooting is the most searched part of this subject, and it has a short order of operations. This is the sequence our fix guides use.

A missing microphone key usually means Dictation is off or another keyboard is active. On an iPhone the setting is Enable Dictation under Settings > General > Keyboard ¹³; a third-party keyboard replaces Apple's and may have no microphone at all. A key that is there but dead is a permission problem. Apple's general advice for an app whose microphone does not work is to go to Settings, tap Microphone and make sure the app is enabled ⁴⁹. On Android the equivalent is the recording permission, and refusing it with Don't allow blocks voice typing ²¹. Dictation that stops early may be the 30-second silence timeout ¹⁴, Low Power Mode or a Bluetooth headset that has switched modes. Wrong words come from a poor microphone, the wrong language or a noisy room.

Each platform has a full guide, and each symptom a short answer:

• iPhone dictation not working: greyed out, button missing, stopped after an update, stops after a few words, why it is so bad
• Voice typing not working on Android: microphone disappeared, no permission to enable voice typing, Android Auto voice commands
• Apple Watch: not working, disabled message

For hardware-side causes such as headsets and background noise, see the guides on dictation microphones, background noise and dictation not working in general. On how accurate phone dictation really is, a veterinary study that compared iPhone speech recognition with Whisper found the iPhone transcripts outperformed Whisper on readability, technical accuracy and clinical flow ⁵⁰, though that is one small study of five case discussions. In a separate 2025 test of one episode, Apple's speech API had a word error rate of 10.3 percent against 1.5 percent for Whisper Large V3 Turbo ^{51 52}. Those two results disagree because they measure different audio, models and criteria, which is a reason to test on your own voice.

Voice typing in WhatsApp uses your keyboard's microphone, not WhatsApp's

When you dictate into a WhatsApp chat, you use the microphone key of your keyboard, which is a different button from the microphone that records a voice message. Three different things get called "voice to text in WhatsApp", and the guide to voice typing in WhatsApp and messaging apps separates them:

1. Typing by voice (the keyboard microphone), covered above.
2. Reading voice messages you receive as text: WhatsApp offers voice message transcripts, which you turn on under Settings > Chats > Voice message transcripts ⁵³, and then tap and hold a voice message to get the Transcribe option ⁵⁴. WhatsApp says the transcripts are generated on your device, so that no one else, not even WhatsApp, can hear or read the messages ⁵⁵.
3. Texting hands-free, using Siri or Google Assistant to send a message without touching the phone.

The distinction matters for privacy. A dictated message is private only if your keyboard processes speech on the phone, as discussed above. Pages for each case:

• How do you convert WhatsApp voice messages to text?
• Why are WhatsApp voice message transcripts not working?
• Why is voice typing not working in WhatsApp?
• How do you dictate and send a text message hands-free?
• How do you see audio messages as text in iMessage and Google Messages?

If you work with received audio rather than typing, the transcription overview covers turning recordings and voice notes into text, and apps and browsers covers dictation inside specific apps.

Apple Watch dictation starts from the microphone button in any text field

On Apple Watch, Apple lists the onscreen keyboard, Scribble and Dictation as its input methods. Dictation is described as "to have your speech transcribed to text" and is not available in all languages ³¹. The same guide says you can speak emoji by name ³⁸, replace a word by tapping it and saying another, and select all with a double-tap ³⁹.

What the watch does with your speech, and whether it works away from the iPhone, depends on the model and language, and Apple's text-entry page does not settle that. Our guide to dictation on Apple Watch separates what Apple documents from what is reported elsewhere, and walks through the usual fixes. Specific questions: why dictation is not working on an Apple Watch, how to change the dictation language and why the watch says dictation is disabled.

Live Transcribe, Live Captions and Voice Control go beyond the keyboard

Phones include free speech-to-text features for people who cannot hear speech, and for people who cannot use a touchscreen. They are different tools from keyboard dictation, and the guide to Live Transcribe, Live Captions and Voice Control explains each one. The accessibility side of this subject is also covered in our accessibility overview.

• Live Transcribe is Google's Android app for real-time captions of the conversation around you. It generates captions in over 80 languages with varying accuracy ⁵⁶. In March 2022 Google announced that Live Transcribe would work fully offline after an additional download ⁵⁷. According to Wikipedia, the offline mode is only available on devices with 6 GB of RAM and certain Pixel devices ⁵⁸, and it works once the language pack is installed ⁵⁹.
• Live Captions on iPhone caption audio playing on the phone and conversations. Apple says it is available on iPhone 11 or later, is not available in all languages or regions, and that its accuracy may vary, so it should not be relied on in high-risk or emergency situations ⁶⁰. Android has its own Live Caption feature.
• Voice Control lets you operate an iPhone or iPad by voice. It needs iOS 13 or later and a one-time file download, after which no Wi-Fi connection is needed ⁶¹. Voice Access does the same job on Android.

Related questions: is there Live Transcribe for iPhone, how to get captions on phone calls, how to control an iPhone with your voice and how to control an Android phone with your voice. For the rights and health context see the accessibility overview.

A dictation app earns its place for long, private or polished text

For messages, the free keyboards are enough. A separate app earns its place in four cases: long dictation, offline privacy beyond the keyboard's own settings, AI cleanup of the text, and specialist vocabulary. On iPhone, apps have to work around the keyboard limits described above. On Android, a voice keyboard can replace Gboard entirely. Some dictation tools exist for phones as well as computers: Dragon Anywhere Mobile, for example, lets you create, edit and format documents of any length, according to Nuance ⁶².

Compare any app on four points: where audio is processed (phone or cloud), how it inserts text, its price model and its languages. Test it with your own voice before you pay. Yap, which we make, is an on-device dictation app for Mac and Windows with phone support; for the free options first, see download, pricing and the free online dictation tool in a browser. The guide to the best dictation apps for iPhone and Android compares the options with dated facts instead of an affiliate ranking, and these questions have their own answers:

• What is the best free dictation app for iPhone?
• What is the best free voice to text app for Android?
• Can you use Whisper AI as a keyboard on iPhone or Android?
• Is there a Dragon dictation app for iPhone or Android?
• How do dictation keyboards work on iPhone and Android?

For software that spans devices, read the dictation software overview, and for computers see dictation on Windows and dictation on Mac. For how the engines work, the speech recognition overview explains word error rate and on-device models.

Every guide on this subject

Common questions

Do I need an app to dictate on my phone? No. The keyboard on every iPhone, iPad, Android phone and Galaxy has a microphone key, as described in the sections above.

Is dictation faster than typing on a phone? Yes. In a controlled iPhone study, speech reached 153 words per minute against 52 on the keyboard ³, with proofreading still needed ¹⁰.

Does it work without internet? Often yes. Apple says iPhone Dictation runs on the device in many languages ¹, and a February 2025 report says Gboard's offline voice typing works on all devices ³⁰.

Why did the microphone key vanish? Dictation is off, another keyboard is active, or the permission was refused. See the iPhone and Android fix guides above.

Who can hear my dictation? It depends on whether processing is on the phone or on a server, which your iPhone's Keyboard settings show ⁴³. A third-party keyboard with Full Access is governed by its developer's policy.