How do you dictate in Apple Notes?

Yes. Apple Notes has no dictation button of its own. It uses the Dictation feature built into macOS and iOS, so you turn that on once and then dictate into any note. On a Mac, Apple lists composing notes as a use of general text Dictation ¹. On an iPhone, Dictation works in any place where you can type ². The steps below cover both, plus Pages, which uses the same menu on a Mac.

On a Mac, turn Dictation on once, then start it in the note

Dictation is switched off until you turn it on in System Settings. On a Mac running macOS 27, choose Apple menu > System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar, go to Dictation, turn it on and click Enable ³.

Then dictate into a note:

1. Open Notes, create a new note or open an existing one, and click where the text should go.
2. Start Dictation in one of three ways: press the Microphone key on keyboards that have one, press the Dictation shortcut, or choose Edit > Start Dictation ⁴.
3. Speak at a normal pace.
4. Stop with the Escape key, the Microphone key or the shortcut ⁵. Dictation also stops by itself after 30 seconds without speech ⁶.

Press and release the Microphone key. Pressing and holding it opens Siri instead, if Siri is turned on ⁷. That mix-up can make a first attempt seem to do the wrong thing.

Apple's Notes guide, in the pages we checked, does not describe a separate dictation feature for Notes. The steps above are the general Dictation steps, and they work in Notes because Notes is a text field on the Mac. The full walkthrough is in How to Use Dictation on a Mac.

On an iPhone, the keyboard microphone dictates into a note

On an iPhone the switch is in Settings, not in Notes:

1. Open Settings, tap General, then Keyboard.
2. Turn on Enable Dictation. If a prompt appears, tap Enable Dictation again ⁸.
3. Open a note, tap in the text, and tap the microphone on the onscreen keyboard. Speak, then tap it again to stop.

Because Dictation works in any place you can type, you can speak and type within the same note ². You can also say "Stop dictation", or stay silent, and the microphone turns off. The full phone steps for every platform are in How to Turn On Voice Typing on Every Device.

Pages uses the same Edit menu on a Mac

If you searched for dictation in Pages, the answer is the same on a Mac. Apple's Pages guide says to start dictation in a document by choosing Edit > Start Dictation, and that a guided setup appears first if you have not used dictation before ⁹.

It depends: a recording is not dictation

Dictation types what you say as you say it. A recording is different. On an iPhone, Notes can record audio inside a note and transcribe it, and whether a transcript appears depends on the phone's language and requirements. For that route, see Can Apple Notes transcribe audio?. If you only want the words typed, use Dictation.

Privacy also depends on the device. On a Mac, Apple says general text Dictation is processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers, and you can check this in Keyboard settings ¹⁰. For how your recordings are handled, see Does Apple keep dictation recordings?

What to do when nothing appears

Check the basics in this order: Dictation is turned on, the correct microphone is selected, and the cursor is inside the note. Mac troubleshooting starts with the same check, whether Dictation is turned on in Keyboard settings. If the microphone icon is greyed out, the next step is to check microphone access. The full checklist is in Dictation Not Working?.

For the phrase commands (such as "new line" and "period"), see Does voice typing add punctuation automatically?. To stop Dictation for good, use the steps in How do you turn off voice typing?.