Offline Voice Typing on iPhone and Android

Yes, for many languages. iPhone dictation is processed on the phone and needs no internet connection in the languages Apple supports on the device. On Android, offline voice typing depends on your phone, your keyboard and your language, so it is worth checking each one. This guide covers the offline setup for the iPhone keyboard, Gboard, Samsung voice input and Apple Watch, names the features that still need a connection, and gives a simple airplane mode test that shows whether dictation is running on your phone.

Speech turns into text without a connection when the model runs on the phone

Speech recognition runs in one of two places. A server model is large, so your audio travels over the internet to be transcribed. An on-device model is small enough to store on the phone, so the audio can be transcribed without a connection. Google explained the size problem directly when it moved Gboard to the phone in 2019: its traditional server-side recognizer used a search graph of almost 2 GB, too large for a phone, which is why it needed a connection ¹. The new on-device model was 80 MB after compression ², which makes the server graph up to about 25 times larger ³.

The chart below puts those sizes next to a third-party example. Vosk, an open-source offline engine, ships per-language models of about 50 MB each ⁴.

A smaller model is not automatically a worse one. Google said in 2019 that its on-device design offered the same accuracy as its server-based models in a much smaller model ⁵. That is Google's own claim about its design, not an independent test, so check accuracy with your own sentences before you depend on it.

iPhone dictates offline in many languages, with one switch to turn on

Apple's iPhone guide says that dictation is processed on the phone, not sent away: "Dictation is processed on your iPhone in many languages, and no internet connection is required" ⁶. In iOS 27, the setup Apple lists is one switch. Open the Settings app, tap General, tap Keyboard, and turn on Enable Dictation. If a prompt appears, tap Enable Dictation again to confirm ⁷.

Two words in Apple's sentence matter: "many" and "in". Offline coverage is a list of languages, not every language on the phone. In Apple's iOS feature availability table, On-Device and Modeless Dictation is listed for 48 language and regional variants, by our count of that table ⁸. Before you rely on airplane mode, check that your language is on that list, then run the test at the end of this guide.

With Apple Intelligence in iOS 27, dictation uses an on-device model to improve spelling, punctuation and capitalization. It is available in English on the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air or later ⁹. Apple Intelligence on iOS 27 needs an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max or iPhone 16 model or later ¹⁰.

Gboard's offline recognizer started on Pixel phones in American English

Google added offline voice recognition to Gboard in March 2019 ¹¹. The first release was narrow. Google said its new on-device Gboard recognizer was initially launched to all Pixel phones in American English only ¹². Google's 2019 post describes that launch, not the current list of phones and languages, so it cannot tell you what your phone does today.

We could not open Google's current Gboard help page during this research, so this guide does not give current offline download steps or a current language list. Check the voice settings on your own phone, and run the airplane mode test for each language you dictate in.

What the sources do confirm is how you start voice typing. On Android with Gboard, you tap a text field, tap the microphone at the top of the keyboard, and speak when you see "Speak now" ¹³. If Android asks for recording permission, it offers three choices: While using app, Only this time and Don't allow ¹⁴. If you choose Don't allow, voice typing cannot listen, so change that setting if the microphone key does nothing. For more on the microphone key, see voice typing on Android.

Samsung voice input keeps its offline language packs in the keyboard settings

Samsung phones and tablets have two built-in voice-to-text apps, Samsung voice input and Google Voice Typing ¹⁵. Samsung voice input is only available when you use the Samsung Keyboard ¹⁶. The offline setting lives in the keyboard itself. Samsung's keyboard settings have an Offline voice input section where you install offline language packs ¹⁷.

Samsung's support page describes these steps. Menu names can change with One UI updates, so check them against your phone.

1. Open Settings, tap General management, then tap Keyboard list and default.
2. Tap Samsung Keyboard, swipe to and tap Voice input, then tap Samsung voice input.
3. In the Offline voice input section, tap the switch next to a language that is already installed. To add one, tap Install offline language pack, tap the Download icon next to your language, and wait until it appears in the Installed section.

Samsung's page does not list which languages the offline packs cover, so run the airplane mode test after you install each pack.

Talk to Text on Samsung Galaxy covers the rest of the setup, including the microphone key on the keyboard toolbar.

Apple Watch dictation depends on the paired iPhone and on your language

Apple says that if your paired iPhone is nearby, you can use it to enter text on Apple Watch ¹⁸. Apple also says dictation on Apple Watch, which transcribes your speech to text, is not available in all languages ¹⁹.

Apple's watch documentation does not say whether dictation works on the watch with no iPhone nearby and no network connection. We did not find a primary source that confirms it, and forum reports disagree. Test the watch yourself: with the iPhone out of range or in airplane mode, dictate a sentence in your language on the watch. If it fails, the watch did not dictate offline in that language on that day. See the full Apple Watch dictation guide for the other settings.

Some iPhone dictation features still need a connection, even when speech stays on the phone

Offline recognition does not cover everything that happens when you dictate. Apple's guide names several cases where speech or data leaves the phone.

The search field case matters most for privacy. If a search bar is where you dictate, your words may leave the phone as a search query, even when the recognition itself ran on the device. Dictate into a note or a message instead if you want to avoid that path.

A third-party keyboard needs Full Access to reach the internet

A third-party keyboard runs in a sandbox. Apple's developer documentation says the sandbox disallows network access by default, and that users must switch on Allow Full Access to change this ²². That is how Apple's rule works on the iPhone: a keyboard that sends your speech to its own servers can only do so after you turn on Allow Full Access. That reading is ours, based on the sandbox rule, not a separate Apple statement.

If you install a third-party keyboard for dictation, check whether it recognizes speech on the phone. Read its privacy policy before you grant Full Access, since Full Access is what lets it reach the network.

A third-party Android app can work offline after one download, with fewer languages

Seamless, an open source Android app listed on F-Droid, shows the trade-off clearly. Its listing says that the app's model is downloaded once, and then "once the model is downloaded, speech to text translation works entirely offline" ²³. The listing also says that, as a standalone app, Seamless can translate between five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and Russian ²⁴.

Five languages is a narrow list, so check that yours is included before you install it. Its developer's own description is the only source we read, so it is not an independent test. For the other options, see the best dictation apps for iPhone and Android, and the question on the best offline speech to text app for Android.

On-device recognition keeps audio off servers, but Apple's opt-in settings still matter

The main privacy reason to choose offline recognition is that the audio is not sent to a server to be transcribed. Apple's policy shows what changes when speech does go to Apple. Your device indicates in the Keyboard settings whether dictated audio and transcripts are processed on the device or sent to Apple's servers ²⁵. Dictation sent to Apple's servers is not stored unless you opt in to Improve Siri and Dictation ²⁶.

If you opt in, Apple says that the setting allows it to store and review a sample of your Siri and Dictation audio ²⁷. For people who opt in, Apple says only its own employees, under confidentiality obligations, can access that audio ²⁸. Apple also links Siri and Dictation request history, including transcripts, to a random identifier rather than your Apple Account, and says it may keep that history for up to two years ²⁹.

For the full iPhone answer, read whether iPhone dictation is private and our guide to dictating privately. For Android, the sources we could open today do not include a current Google or Samsung statement on keyboard audio, so read the privacy settings inside your own keyboard before you assume offline recognition covers everything.

Each offline option follows its own rule, so compare them before you choose

The options above do not share one rule. The table puts each one next to the evidence we could open today, with the languages you need to check.

The practical rule is to choose a language first and then a device. Speech in a language on Apple's on-device list is processed on the iPhone, so it works offline in a standard text field ⁶. On Android, the built-in options depend on your phone, so run the test before you rely on them. An app you install should be checked against the languages you actually speak.

An airplane mode test shows whether dictation runs on the phone

Airplane mode turns off the phone's connection, so any text that appears while it is on was produced without one. That is what makes it a fair test: a recognizer that needs a server cannot finish a sentence while the phone has no connection to reach one. It is also a test you can repeat, because it uses the phone's own microphone and keyboard rather than a report about the phone. The test is short:

1. Open a note or a message draft and place the cursor in the text field.
2. Turn on airplane mode and check that Wi-Fi is off too.
3. Tap the microphone key on your keyboard and wait until it is listening.
4. Dictate a test line with a number, a name and a comma, such as "Meet Priya at 3 pm on Thursday, bring the notes."
5. Read the result. If the words appear with the punctuation, dictation ran with no connection in that language.

Read the result against the table below.

A pass proves one language on one phone at one time. Repeat the test for each language you dictate in, and again after a major system update, since the language lists change. For the setup steps on other devices, see how to use dictation on iPhone and dictation languages on iPhone and Android.

Yap, which we make, is an on-device dictation app for Mac and Windows. If you want the same kind of offline dictation on a computer, see our download page for the platforms we currently support.

Keep reading

For the full overview, start with dictation on phones and tablets. Related guides cover voice typing not working on Android, dictation on iPad and Android tablets and Live Transcribe, Live Captions and voice control. For the terms used here, see the Gboard, Samsung voice input and Google voice typing entries. For how the recognizer itself works on the device, read on-device versus cloud speech recognition.