How to Use Dictation on iPhone (Voice to Text)

Dictation is built into the iPhone keyboard, so there is nothing to install. You switch it on once under Settings, General, then Keyboard. After that you tap the microphone key and speak, and the words appear in the text field. In many languages the speech is converted on the phone itself, with no internet connection. This guide gives the steps for iOS 27, the exact menu names, and what the newer, more advanced model adds on recent iPhones. For the short answer to the most common question, see what dictation on iPhone is.

Dictation is already on your iPhone: one switch in Settings turns it on

Dictation is not a separate app. It has one master switch, and it sits in the keyboard settings. Apple's steps are short:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap General, then tap Keyboard.
3. Turn on Enable Dictation. If a prompt appears, tap Enable Dictation ¹.

These steps come from Apple's Dictate text on iPhone article. That article is written for iOS 27. We did not open a separate iOS 26 copy, so if your iPhone runs iOS 26, check the menu names on your own screen before you rely on them.

If the microphone key does not appear on your keyboard, this switch is the first thing to check. The other causes, including a missing microphone permission, are covered in our guide to fixing iPhone dictation. To turn dictation off again, return to the same screen and turn off Enable Dictation. The steps are in how to turn off dictation on iPhone.

Tap the microphone key, speak naturally, and tap again to stop

Starting dictation takes two taps. Tap in a text field to place the insertion point where the text should go, then tap the keyboard. Apple's article says that when the microphone appears near the insertion point, you begin to dictate. Speak in normal sentences, and say the punctuation names and editing commands as you go. Those commands are covered below.

You can stop dictation in three ways: tap the stop control, say "Stop dictation", or stay silent. Silence is easy to forget. If there is no speech for a while, the phone ends the session for you. Apple's article puts the limit at 30 seconds of silence ². If dictation seems to stop in the middle of a thought, the pause was probably longer than that. Tap the microphone key again and carry on.

You can type, tap and fix words without stopping dictation

The keyboard stays open while Dictation runs. Apple says you can use typing and Dictation together, so you can switch between touch and voice to enter text ³. A practical pattern is to dictate a paragraph, tap to move the cursor to a word you want to change, type the fix, and then go back to voice for the next sentence.

Voice editing works through a small set of commands. Say "select" or "delete" followed by the phrase you want to change. Say "undo" or "redo" if you change your mind or want to repeat a command. To spell out a name or a word that the recognizer gets wrong, say its letters. Apple's example is "Let's invite Steven S-T-E-P-H-E-N" ⁴, and its example for a correction is "Change tea to T-E-E", from the same article.

The editing commands have a limit that Apple states plainly. The commands to edit text are available in U.S. English ⁵. If you dictate in another language, plan to make edits by touch. The full list of commands, with the exact words for punctuation, formatting and emoji, is in our guide to iPhone dictation commands. The same kinds of commands on a computer are explained in dictation commands for editing and formatting.

Speech is about three times faster than typing on an iPhone, but it leaves more errors

A 2018 controlled study from Stanford University and the University of Washington compared the two methods on an iPhone 6 Plus. Participants entered short messages in a laboratory, once by speech and once with the built-in keyboard. For English, speech reached 153 words per minute ⁶, and the keyboard reached 52 words per minute ⁷. That is a ratio of 2.93 to one in favor of speech ⁶.

The table turns those rates into the time it takes to enter a longer text. The minutes are our calculation from the two rates.

The study also measured Mandarin Chinese, and the pattern holds there: 123 words per minute by speech ¹⁰, against 43 words per minute with the Pinyin keyboard ¹¹.

Speed is only half of the result. The same study found that speech made fewer errors during entry, with a corrected error rate of 5.30 percent against 11.22 percent for the keyboard. But speech left slightly more errors in the final text, with an uncorrected error rate of 1.30 percent against 0.79 percent ¹². In practice, read a dictated message before you send it, most of all a message with names, numbers or addresses.

The study has limits that matter for everyday use. The authors say that further study is required to quantify performance in non-laboratory settings for both methods ¹³. Treat 153 and 52 as what a controlled test showed, not as a promise for a noisy train or a long email.

Other tests disagree. In a 2025 study of veterinary case discussions, the iPhone's built-in speech recognition gave transcripts that outperformed Whisper on readability, technical accuracy and clinical flow ¹⁴. That study recorded five clinical case discussions ¹⁵, so it is a small sample from one field. A 2025 test by 9to5Mac ran Apple's speech API on a Mac, not on an iPhone, through a command-line tool ¹⁶. On one 7-minute-31-second episode, Apple's speech API had a word error rate of 10.3 percent ¹⁷, while Whisper Large V3 Turbo had 1.5 percent ¹⁸. Accuracy depends on which recognizer does the work, and on the test.

iPhone adds punctuation for you, and you can still say it

In supported languages, Dictation inserts commas, periods and question marks by itself as you speak ¹⁹. You do not need to say "comma" to get one, although you can.

When you want a different mark, say its name. Apple's example is "exclamation point" ²⁰. The command list includes period, comma, exclamation point, question mark, dollar sign and parentheses ²¹. To start a new line or a new paragraph, say "new line" or "new paragraph" ²². For a fuller treatment of marks and where the automatic ones go wrong, see our guide to dictation punctuation.

In some languages, Dictation also inserts emoji from their names ²³. Apple's examples are "heart emoji" and "smiley face emoji" ²⁴, and you add one by saying its name ( Apple's article).

If the automatic marks get in your way, you can turn them off. Go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, and turn off Auto-Punctuation ²⁵. The automatic punctuation setting controls the marks the phone adds on its own, and it is separate from the microphone key, which starts and stops the speech.

Many languages are processed on the iPhone itself, with no internet

Apple says that Dictation is processed on the iPhone in many languages, and that no internet connection is required ²⁶.

How many languages are covered? Apple's iOS feature availability table has 48 language and regional variants for On-Device and Modeless Dictation ²⁷, a count we made from its rows. Most rows name a region in brackets, and a few name only a language, such as Arabic, Japanese and Turkish. The list includes English (United States), German (Germany) and Japanese, among others. If your language is not on that list, Apple's article does not say where the speech is processed, so do not assume it stays on the phone. The guide to dictation languages on iPhone and Android covers the differences by language.

Dictation follows the keyboards you have added. Apple says that when you use a keyboard for another language, you can use Dictation in that language as well, and it points to its guide on adding or changing keyboards ( Apple's article). Apple also notes that Dictation may not be available in all languages, countries or regions, and that features may vary ( Apple's article). Check the language you need on your own phone before you depend on it.

Offline does not mean free of every network use. Apple says that when you use Dictation, cellular data charges may apply ²⁸. On-device speech does not need a connection, but a session that uses the network can use data, and your carrier's plan decides what that costs.

Some dictation goes beyond the text field itself. Apple says that when you dictate in a search field, the text may be sent to the search engine to process the search ²⁹. If you dictate something private into a search box, the offline setting does not cover it. For a fuller account of what Apple keeps and why, see our guide to Apple dictation privacy. The short answer to whether Apple dictation works offline is on its own page, and the setting that controls whether Apple keeps audio is explained in the Improve Siri and Dictation entry.

iOS 27 adds a more advanced dictation model on newer iPhones

With Apple Intelligence in iOS 27, Dictation uses an on-device model to improve spelling, punctuation and capitalization. Apple lists it as available in English on the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air or later ³⁰. Apple's own table calls the feature More advanced Dictation, and lists it for nine English variants: English (Australia), (Canada), (India), (Ireland), (New Zealand), (Singapore), (South Africa), (United Kingdom) and (United States) ³¹.

The model is part of Apple Intelligence, so the phone also has to meet Apple Intelligence's own requirements. Apple's article says that on iOS 27 or later, Apple Intelligence is available on an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 model or later ³². The newer dictation model is narrower still. MacRumors reported that the standard iPhone 17 is left out because it ships with 8GB of memory, below the 12GB the model needs ³³.

Whether the newer model is on by default is not settled. When iOS 27 was in beta, MacRumors reported that the feature was not turned on by default in the first developer beta ³⁴. We did not find a report that confirms the default in the public release, so after you update, check the Dictation settings on your phone rather than assuming either way. The short answer on whether the newer model is better is in is dictation better in iOS 27, and the Apple name is explained in the Apple Intelligence entry.

Dictation works anywhere you can type, once the microphone is allowed

Apple says that with Dictation on iPhone you can dictate text anywhere you can type it, and that you can use typing and Dictation together in the same session ( Apple's article). Another possible block is an app without microphone access. If the microphone does not work in an app, Apple says to go to Settings, tap Microphone, and make sure the app is enabled ³⁵.

If the microphone key is missing in a text field you expected to work, check the keyboard setting first, then the app's microphone access. Our troubleshooting guide covers each case in order.

When built-in dictation is not enough, a dictation app may fill the gap

Built-in dictation needs nothing installed, and for many messages and notes it may be all you need. The limits this guide has covered are specific. Dictation stops after 30 seconds without speech ². The voice editing commands are available in U.S. English ⁵. The newer model covers nine English variants ³¹. If one of those limits blocks your work, a dictation app may suit you better. Our comparison of the best dictation apps for iPhone and Android lists the options, and how to choose a dictation app explains what to compare.

Yap, which we make, is an on-device dictation app for Mac and Windows, and it also runs on phones. If the limits above matter for your work, see what it does on the download page, and compare it with the built-in tool against your own needs before you switch.

Common questions have short answers on their own pages

Each question below has its own short answer, with the steps and the sources:

• 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?

For the rest of the phone topic, the overview of dictation and voice to text on iPhone and Android links every guide in order, including iPhone dictation commands, offline voice typing on phones and dictation on iPad.