Dictation on the Mac: speak instead of typing, and what to do when nothing is written

How do you turn on dictation on a Mac?

Dictation is off until you enable it, and the switch is in the keyboard settings, not in a separate app.

1. Choose Apple menu › System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar.
2. Go to Dictation and turn it on. Click Enable when macOS asks.
3. macOS may ask whether you want to help improve Siri and Dictation by sharing audio recordings. Not Now is an answer, and dictation works the same without it.
4. Put the insertion point in a text field, press the Microphone key (function row) or your shortcut, and speak once the cursor pulses.

Two details that save time later. The microphone source is shown in the same panel: that is the device macOS will listen to. And Auto-punctuation, on by default in the languages that support it, inserts commas, periods and question marks for you — you can turn it off just below.

While dictating, say the name of a punctuation mark ("exclamation mark"), of an emoji ("heart emoji"), or say "new line" and "new paragraph". A word macOS is unsure about is underlined in blue: click it to pick another spelling.

What is the Mac dictation shortcut, and can you change it?

There is no single factory shortcut: macOS offers a list, and on most Macs the Microphone key in the function row starts dictation on its own. Press and release that key to dictate; press and hold it and you get Siri instead.

1. In System Settings › Keyboard › Dictation, open the Shortcut pop-up menu.
2. Pick one of the entries — Press Fn (Function) Key Twice is the one most people mean by "the dictation shortcut".
3. For a combination of your own, choose Customize and press the keys, for example ⌥ Z.

Choosing Press Fn Twice also changes what the Fn key does elsewhere in Keyboard settings, which macOS does for you. If the double tap does nothing, that option is the first thing to check: another feature may have claimed the Fn key.

Why is Mac dictation not working?

In almost every case the Mac is listening to the wrong microphone, something else has taken over the key you press, or the language is not installed. Work down this table before reinstalling anything.

Only after those: restart the Mac (the speech services run in the background and can hang), and check that macOS is up to date. Deleting preference files is a last resort, not a first step.

Can you hold a key to talk instead of toggling dictation?

Not with macOS dictation: it is a switch — you start it, you speak, you stop it. Holding a key while you talk, like a walkie-talkie, and having the sentence appear when you let go, is what Tack+ does.

Tack+ is a Mac app that keeps what you use all day in a thin line at the edge of the screen. Dictation is one of its keys:

• Hold, speak, release. Hold ⌥ ⇧ Space, say your sentence, let go: it is written where the cursor is, in any app.
• Or tap once and listening stays open, hands free, until the next press. Esc throws the recording away.
• The shortcut is yours: a key held with ⌘, ⌥ or ⌃, a function key on its own, or a single modifier key — Fn, or the right ⌘, ⌥ or ⌃. A lone key only counts after 180 milliseconds alone, and any second key cancels it, so ⌘C never starts a dictation.
• Nine languages: French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. "Auto" follows the first language of the Mac the engine knows — not the language Tack+ is set to.
• Hesitations go. "Um" and its cousins are removed as whole words, per language. Nothing else is rewritten: a dictation that improves what you said ends up writing what you did not say.

Writing at the cursor needs the Accessibility permission, which macOS asks for once. Without it, Tack+ copies the sentence instead, ready to paste.

Does dictation send your voice to Apple?

For general text dictation on a recent Mac, no: the audio and the transcript are processed on the device. The sentence under Dictation in Keyboard settings states it for your Mac, and "About Ask Siri, Dictation & Privacy", at the bottom of the same panel, is Apple's own text on what is and is not sent. Dictating into a search box is the exception Apple names.

Tack+ uses the same on-device recognition and nothing else:

• macOS 26 and later: the system's current speech model. Measured on a MacBook Air M4, twelve seconds of speech came back in about a third of a second, punctuation included.
• macOS 14 and 15: the older recognizer, pinned to on-device recognition. If a language is only available on Apple's servers, Tack+ reports the language as missing rather than send the audio away. That is why a language sometimes has to be installed in the system Dictation settings first.
• The audio is a temporary file, deleted as soon as the text is produced, and discarded if you cancel. The microphone is open only for the length of one dictation — macOS shows its orange dot while it is.

How do you dictate in another language?

Add the language first, then switch to it while dictating.

1. System Settings › Keyboard › Dictation, click Edit next to Languages, and select the language and region.
2. With more than one language set up, click the language shown next to the cursor while dictating, or press the Globe key, and choose.
3. The first use of a language may take a few seconds: macOS downloads what it needs, once.

Not every language is available everywhere, and the extra features (auto-punctuation among them) do not cover all of them. Apple's macOS Feature Availability page is the list that decides.

macOS dictation or Tack+: what changes?

They coexist: macOS dictation keeps its own shortcut, Tack+ has another. If you want to ask for something rather than dictate it, that is the job of the local assistant.

To transcribe a whole call rather than dictate a sentence — Zoom, Teams, Meet or FaceTime — see how to transcribe a call on a Mac.