How many languages does iPhone dictation support?

Apple does not give one number. Its feature availability page lists iPhone Dictation by language and region, so the same language can appear several times. On the page we read on 2026-10-17, the general Dictation list has 63 entries, which cover 34 languages ^{1 2}. A second list, for On-Device and Modeless Dictation, has 48 entries and 22 languages ^{3 4}. The answer you need depends on which list you mean and whether your language appears in both.

Apple counts language and region entries, not languages

Apple's list is organized by language and region. English is listed for Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland and many other places, so English appears several times ⁵. That is why the entry count is much larger than the language count. English alone has 15 entries on the general list ².

To count languages, we grouped the 63 entries by language name, so each language counts once however many regions it has. The result is 34 languages. We counted Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese and Shanghainese as separate languages, because Apple lists them that way. A different grouping rule would give a different total.

Apple's list is the source for these counts, and the number of entries is ours. Apple does not print a total.

The on-device list is shorter, with 22 languages

Apple has a second list in the same section, called On-Device and Modeless Dictation. It has 48 entries, and they belong to 22 languages ^{3 4}. Apple's dictation page says Dictation "is processed on your iPhone in many languages, and no internet connection is required" ⁶. Apple does not name the languages in that sentence, so the on-device list is the closest Apple gives to the languages that run on the phone.

Hindi is on the general list but not on the on-device list

The general list includes Hindi (India), but the on-device list does not ⁷. A language can therefore be supported for Dictation in one setup and missing from the other. If you need Hindi with no connection, check the on-device list on Apple's page before you rely on it. For the other Indian languages, read Hindi and other Indian languages on iPhone.

Some features cover even fewer languages

Dictation is not the same as every feature built on it. In iOS 27, Apple Intelligence's More advanced Dictation is listed for nine English language and regional variants ⁸. Other Dictation rows on Apple's page, such as auto-punctuation and emoji, have their own language lists, so read the rows for your language and not only the main list.

How to check your language

1. Open Apple's iOS and iPadOS feature availability page, and find the Dictation section.
2. Find your language and your region. Check both the general list and the On-Device and Modeless list.
3. Add a keyboard for the language on your iPhone. How to add a dictation language on iPhone gives the steps.
4. If the language is on the list but does not appear in Dictation, read why a dictation language is not showing on iPhone.

Apple's page changes with each iOS release, so a count from a different date may not match. The figures here are from the page as it was on 2026-10-17. For the broader picture of Dictation languages on phones, see the guide to dictation languages on iPhone and Android, and for how the on-device model works in general, see on-device speech recognition.