What happened to Enhanced Dictation on Mac?

Apple removed Enhanced Dictation in macOS Catalina, which shipped in 2019. Enhanced Dictation was an optional download that let a Mac dictate without an internet connection. The Dictation tab stayed in the Keyboard settings, but the offline option was gone ¹. No current Apple Dictation page mentions it by name.

What replaced it depends on your Mac. On an Apple silicon Mac, general text Dictation is processed on the device in many languages, so it does not need the internet ². On an Intel Mac, your dictated words go to Apple to be processed ³. Neither result is the same as the old Enhanced Dictation, which was an offline mode on any supported Mac.

Enhanced Dictation was an offline download from Mavericks to Mojave

Standard Mac dictation had a 30-second limit before Enhanced Dictation arrived in OS X Mavericks. Enhanced Dictation removed that limit and worked offline ⁴.

Apple's Mojave help is the clearest description of how it worked. Turning on Enhanced Dictation made it possible to dictate text even when you were offline, and you could deselect it to use server-based dictation instead ⁵.

Catalina removed the offline option and left the Keyboard tab

Catalina is the release where the option disappeared. The evidence for the removal is one detailed account, not an Apple statement. Eclectic Light compared the Keyboard pane in Mojave and Catalina in December 2019 and found that Enhanced Dictation had been removed ¹. Apple's Catalina Dictation guide does not mention Enhanced Dictation, so the removal rests on that one author's account and on the missing option in later pages.

Apple's Catalina guide described keyboard dictation as sending your words to Apple servers, converting them into text in real time ⁶. In the same release Apple introduced Voice Control for controlling a Mac by voice, using on-device speech recognition ⁷. Voice Control handles commands and navigation. It is not a replacement for typing out long text by voice. Our guide to Voice Control on Mac explains the difference.

Apple silicon Macs now do most of the old offline work

The offline need is mostly met by hardware that runs the speech model on the device. Apple's Monterey 12 guide says that on Apple silicon, general text Dictation is processed on the device in many languages, and that no internet connection is required ².

Current Apple pages tell you how to check. Keyboard settings show whether your general text Dictation is processed on the device and not sent to Siri servers ⁸. Look there before you rely on offline use. The check also depends on language, so confirm your language is on Apple's on-device list. Our guide to Mac dictation languages lists which variants are on which list.

Intel Macs still send speech to Apple

If you have an Intel Mac, the offline behavior is not available in the way Enhanced Dictation offered it. Apple's Sonoma 14 guide says that when you dictate on an Intel-based Mac, your dictated utterances are sent to Apple to process your requests ³. Our answer on dictation for Intel Macs covers the steps that still work on those models.

What to do if you need offline dictation today

Check your chip first. Choose Apple menu, then About This Mac. On an Apple silicon Mac, turn on Dictation in System Settings, then Keyboard, and confirm the on-device message in the Dictation section. If the message says your speech is processed on the device, you can dictate without a connection in the languages Apple lists. If you need offline use on an Intel Mac, or in a language outside Apple's on-device list, a dedicated app that runs its own speech model is the usual route. Our guide to offline dictation on Mac covers those options. For the term itself, see Enhanced Dictation and Apple silicon.

For the wider history, our guide to Mac dictation by macOS version puts the Enhanced Dictation years next to the later releases.