Voice Typing Not Working on Android: How to Fix It

If voice typing has stopped working on your Android phone, check four things in this order: that voice typing is switched on in your keyboard, that the keyboard and the phone both allow microphone access, that battery saving is not restricting the keyboard, and that the offline speech pack and the keyboard itself are complete and up to date. Start with the first two. They are quick to check, and they appear near the top of the troubleshooting guides we read.

The order runs from quickest to slowest. It is not a ranking by how often each cause happens, because the sources we could open do not measure that. This guide starts with Gboard, Google's keyboard, because the troubleshooting guides cover it first. On Galaxy phones, Samsung's own keyboard has a separate microphone and its own offline voice input, and the steps below note where the menus differ. For a first-time walk-through, see Voice Typing on Android: How to Use Talk to Text. For Galaxy phones specifically, see Talk to Text on Samsung Galaxy.

Four checks cover the causes the sources name, and the first two are quick

The table below maps each check to the symptom it fixes and to the menu names on Gboard and on Samsung Keyboard. The menu names come from the troubleshooting pages we opened. They change between Android versions and phone makers, so treat them as a map rather than an exact script.

Samsung's keyboard page also says that the screens and settings may vary by phone model and software version ¹. If a label on your phone differs from the table, look for the closest match before deciding that a setting is missing.

Change one thing at a time. After each change, close the app you were typing in, open it again, and dictate a full sentence into a plain notes app. Using a plain notes app keeps the test away from the settings of a messaging or email app. If the same message comes back, undo the change, or leave it on and move to the next check. If you change several settings at once, you cannot tell which one fixed the problem, and you may switch on something you did not need.

A missing microphone key means voice typing is off or the wrong keyboard is active

On Gboard, the microphone is at the top of the keyboard, not on the space bar. Google's help for talk-to-text describes the steps: open an app, tap a text box, tap the microphone at the top of the keyboard, and speak when you see "Speak now" ². If that key is not there, the voice typing switch is the first thing to check. Guiding Tech says that if voice typing is off in Gboard, you cannot use its voice-to-text feature until you switch it on ³.

To turn voice typing on in Gboard:

1. Open any app where you can type, such as Messages or Gmail, and tap the text box.
2. Open Settings from the Gboard toolbar, then tap Voice typing.
3. Turn on Use voice typing. Both Guiding Tech and DroidWin use this label.
4. Return to the text box. The microphone key should now appear at the top of the keyboard. If it still does not, go to the permission checks below.

Samsung Keyboard hides its microphone behind a toolbar switch

On a Galaxy phone, the voice key sits on the keyboard's toolbar. Samsung's US support page says to tap the microphone icon on the keyboard toolbar to start voice input ⁴. The same page says that the switch next to Keyboard toolbar makes the toolbar disappear ⁵. Samsung does not say that switching the toolbar off hides the microphone key, so that link is our reading of its page. If the key has vanished on a Galaxy phone, check that switch before anything else. You can reach these settings from the Settings icon in the toolbar ⁶.

Check which keyboard is active

The microphone you see depends on the keyboard you are typing with. Galaxy phones have two built-in voice-to-text apps, Samsung voice input and Google Voice Typing, and Samsung voice input works only with the Samsung Keyboard ⁷. A setting in Gboard therefore does nothing to Samsung voice input, and a setting in Samsung Keyboard does nothing to Gboard. Open the keyboard you are typing in and follow the steps for that keyboard. Other keyboards have their own menus, so check them in their own settings. A third-party keyboard is covered by the same four checks, but you find each switch in that keyboard's menus.

Microphone access has two switches, and both must be on

Voice typing needs two microphone permissions at the same time: the keyboard's own permission, and the phone-wide Microphone access switch. Guiding Tech notes that a device privacy setting can limit microphone access even when the keyboard's own permission is on ⁸. If either switch is off, you should expect voice typing to fail.

The keyboard's own permission

Gboard asks for microphone access the first time it needs it. When Gboard first uses the microphone, Android asks for permission with three choices ⁹. Choose the first option, While using app. Guiding Tech's first fix sets the same choice to Allow only while using the app, under Settings, Apps, Gboard, Permissions, Microphone ¹⁰.

To change it later:

1. Open Settings, then Apps, then Gboard.
2. Tap Permissions, then Microphone.
3. Choose Allow only while using the app.

An app whose microphone permission has been denied cannot detect your voice, which Guiding Tech states directly ¹¹.

The phone-wide switch

The second switch covers the whole phone. Guiding Tech says to turn on the Microphone access toggle under Settings, Security and privacy, Privacy, and this is separate from the app permission ¹². The article places the toggle in the Controls and alerts section, so look there if you cannot find it directly.

What the error messages mean

The sources we could open quote only a few messages. The first two point to a permission problem. The third is a Gboard crash, which is a different failure.

Guiding Tech names the first message in the title of its troubleshooting guide ¹³. Make Tech Easier says its Gboard guide also helps with the crash message "Unfortunately, Gboard has stopped" ¹⁴. Phones may show other wording, so if your message is not in this table, read it as the closest match.

Battery savers and sleeping apps can stop voice typing on some phones

Battery saving is the third check. The evidence for it is thinner than for the first two. Make Tech Easier says battery-saving modes can restrict Gboard's voice typing feature ¹⁵. Its steps are to open Settings, tap Battery, and turn off Power saving mode or Battery saving. We found no source that shows the same effect on every phone, so test it rather than assuming it.

Galaxy phones add a second step, because Samsung sorts background apps into lists. On a Samsung phone, a sleeping app may run in the background if you start using it again ¹⁶. Deep sleeping apps never run in the background and only work when you open them ¹⁷. Apps on the Never sleeping apps list never turn off or sleep in the background ¹⁸.

To check these lists on a Galaxy phone:

1. Open Settings, then Battery and device care, then Battery, then Background usage limits.
2. Look in Sleeping apps and Deep sleeping apps for your keyboard. Make Tech Easier also advises looking for Sleeping apps on Samsung phones and removing Gboard from that list if it is there.
3. As a test, add the keyboard to Never sleeping apps, then try voice typing again.

Keep the test short. None of the sources we read shows that these lists stop a keyboard in a particular case, and Samsung's pages describe apps in general rather than keyboards. If voice typing works after a change, keep it. If not, undo the change and move on to the speech engine.

The speech engine is the offline pack and the keyboard's own version

The fourth check is the speech engine, which means the recognizer, its language pack and the keyboard's version. The engine matters because Gboard's recognizer can run on the phone, and that version needs a small download of its own.

Google's research blog explains why the change mattered. In 2019 Google moved Gboard voice typing onto the phone, with an 80 MB recognizer that works offline, first on Pixel phones in American English ¹⁹. Before that, Google said its server-side recognizer used a search graph of almost 2 GB, too large for a phone, which is why it needed a connection ²⁰.

The gap is wide. The server graph was no more than 25 times the size of the on-device model ²¹. Guiding Tech says that downloading speech recognition languages for Gboard can improve voice typing in areas with a weak network signal ²². To download a pack on Gboard, open Settings, then System, then Languages. Tap the gear beside Voice input, then Add a language, and download the voice pack for your language.

On Samsung Keyboard, the same idea appears as an offline section. Samsung Keyboard has an Offline voice input section where you install offline language packs ²³. Install the pack for your language there, and test with that language selected on the keyboard.

Updating Gboard is the last part of this check. Guiding Tech says to update Gboard by going to the Google Play Store and searching for Gboard ²⁴, then tap Update. If a Gboard update is the cause, DroidWin suggests going back to an older version by uninstalling the update ²⁵. Not every phone offers that option. We found no Google page that describes this step, so use it only if the failure began with an update.

Clearing Gboard's storage or reinstalling it is the last resort

The sources disagree about where reinstalling belongs. Guiding Tech lists reinstalling among its basic fixes, and warns that uninstalling Gboard deletes its settings, data and features ²⁶. Make Tech Easier and DroidWin reach for clearing data and reinstalling only after the simpler steps. We suggest the second order, because it keeps your settings until you decide to lose them.

1. Restart the phone. Then test voice typing in a notes app.
2. Force stop Gboard. Open Gboard in App info, tap Force stop, and reopen it.
3. Clear the cache. Open Settings, then Apps, then Gboard, then Storage & cache, and tap Clear cache. Make Tech Easier says to clear the cache first and to clear data only if the problem continues ²⁷.
4. Clear data or reinstall. Only if the problem continues. This removes Gboard's stored settings, so turn voice typing and your languages back on afterward.

Before you remove a keyboard, make sure another keyboard is installed, so that you are not left without one while you test.

If it still fails, check the app that is listening

If the built-in keyboard still fails after these four checks, you can try a separate dictation app. Yap, which we make, is one such app, and our guide to the best dictation apps for iPhone and Android lists the choices. Any app that listens to your voice needs microphone access, so the permission checks above apply to it too.

The same kind of failure can look different in other apps. A microphone that works in one app but not in another can point to that app's own permission, which is the check in the permissions section above. The dictation not working guide covers the same failure across devices.

Questions this guide answers

• Why did the microphone disappear from my Android keyboard? Check the Gboard and Samsung switches above first.
• How do you fix "no permission to enable voice typing" on Android? Start with the Gboard permission, then the phone-wide switch.
• Why are voice commands not working on Android Auto? Voice commands in the car are a different feature from voice typing, so this guide does not cover them.

Related guides in this section

• Voice Typing on Android: How to Use Talk to Text shows the first-time setup for Gboard.
• Talk to Text on Samsung Galaxy: How to Use It covers Samsung's own keyboard and microphone.
• iPhone Dictation Not Working? How to Fix It covers the same kinds of failure on an iPhone.
• Offline Voice Typing on iPhone and Android explains which features work without a connection.
• Dictation Languages on iPhone and Android explains how the language setting affects dictation.

For the same checks on other systems, see Windows Dictation Not Working? Fixes for Win+H and Why Mac Dictation Is Not Working, and How to Fix It.