tl;dr
Mac dictation failures come down to five causes: the wrong microphone is selected, an app is missing its microphone permission, a shortcut conflict, a language mismatch, or, for Auri Voice, a broken Accessibility permission or an engine that never finished downloading. Start from the symptom, not the settings: "nothing happens when I press the key" points at permissions and shortcuts, "it types the wrong words" points at the mic and language, and "it works in Notes but not in Slack" points at focus or per-app permissions.
Find your symptom first
Random toggling wastes the ten minutes this page should save you. Match what you see:
| Symptom | Likely cause | Jump to |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing happens when you press the key | Shortcut conflict, dictation off, permission missing | Apple fixes / Auri fixes |
| Recording starts, text never appears | Focus or Accessibility (Auri), field type | Auri fixes |
| Wrong or garbled words | Wrong mic, wrong language | Wrong words |
| Works in Notes, fails in one app | Per-app mic permission, focus | One app only |
| Stopped after a macOS update | Permissions reset | After an update |
Apple Dictation: the four fixes in order
- Confirm it is on. System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation. Toggle it off and on again; this restarts the speech process and clears more faults than it should.
- Check the shortcut. The same panel shows which key starts dictation (the mic key, or a press of Fn/Globe, depending on your keyboard). Apps that remap Fn, and some launcher utilities, silently steal it. Change the shortcut in that panel if pressing it does nothing.
- Check the microphone. System Settings > Sound > Input: the right device is selected and the level meter moves when you speak. A Bluetooth headset that connected for a call is the classic wrong device.
- Check for a Voice Control clash. Voice Control (System Settings > Accessibility) and Dictation both want the microphone. If Voice Control is on and you do not use it deliberately, turn it off.
Auri Voice: the five checks in order
- Focus. The finished text lands at the cursor, so a field that lost focus swallows it. Click directly into the field and press the shortcut again. This is the most common failure and it costs three seconds to rule out.
- Accessibility. Insertion needs the Accessibility permission. If text stopped landing anywhere: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility, remove Auri Voice from the list, add it back, and relaunch the app. The shortcut guide walks through this reset.
- The engine. Open Auri Voice Settings > Voice engine. A local engine shows its download state on the card; an engine still downloading cannot transcribe. If Auri Cloud is selected and your network is down, dictation fails with a could-not-be-reached error rather than falling back — switch to a local engine when you travel. The offline guide covers that setup.
- The word allowance. On the free plan, Auri stops starting new recordings after 1,111 dictated words and shows a notice where the recording indicator would be. That looks like a failure if you have forgotten the cap.
- Shortcut behavior. If recording starts and instantly stops, check Settings > Shortcuts > Shortcut behavior. In Toggle mode you tap once to start and once to stop; if you hold the key out of habit, some keyboards repeat it. Switching to Hold, or to Automatic, matches the mode to your muscle memory instead of fighting it.
Wrong or garbled words
When dictation runs but the transcript is bad, the microphone and language settings matter more than the engine:
- Check the input device and level under System Settings > Sound > Input. Speak a sentence and watch the meter.
- Match the recognition language to what you speak. In Apple Dictation that is the language list in the Dictation panel; in Auri Voice it follows the engine, and multilingual engines handle language switching on their own.
- Names and jargon that come out wrong every time are a vocabulary problem, not a hardware one: add them under Auri Voice Settings > Dictation > Text > Vocabulary. The accuracy guide has the full method.
Works in Notes, fails in one app
For Apple Dictation, the failing app usually lacks its own microphone permission: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone, enable the app, then restart it. Browsers add their own layer: Chrome and Safari keep per-site microphone permissions in their own settings.
For Auri Voice, insertion works app by app through Accessibility, and the usual culprit is focus: web apps like Google Docs and Slack sometimes move focus when a message sends or a comment closes. Click into the field again before dictating. When a take does not land, it is not lost: the Paste last transcript shortcut (press ⌘⇧/ for the shortcut list) puts your most recent dictation back on the clipboard, and History (⌘3) keeps every saved take searchable.
Stopped after a macOS update
Major macOS updates reset or invalidate permissions without saying so. Two minutes restores order:
- System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone: confirm your dictation apps are still enabled.
- For Auri Voice, do the Accessibility remove-and-re-add reset from the checklist above, then relaunch.
- Press your shortcut in Notes and dictate one sentence before trusting it in a work thread.
When it is none of these
A few failures look like dictation bugs and are not. Secure fields hide the dictation mic and block insertion by design; type passwords by hand. A muted or repositioned external mic produces empty transcripts with no error. And a Mac under heavy load can lag on the largest local models: Whisper Large Turbo wants 8 GB of RAM or more, and the lighter engines exist for exactly that machine. If dictation still fails after this page, write to [email protected] with the symptom and what you ruled out; that one sentence of context shortcuts the back-and-forth.
FAQ
Why does dictation work in Notes but not in Chrome or Slack?
Two usual causes. For Apple Dictation, the browser or app may lack its own microphone permission: check System Settings, Privacy & Security, Microphone. For Auri Voice, the target field probably lost focus: click directly into the message field and press the shortcut again.
Why did dictation stop after a macOS update?
Major updates can reset or invalidate permissions. Recheck Microphone for the apps you dictate into, and for Auri Voice recheck Accessibility: remove Auri Voice from the Accessibility list, add it back, and relaunch the app. That reset fixes most stubborn cases.
Does Auri Voice need the internet to dictate?
Not for transcription with a local engine, once its model has downloaded. If the Auri Cloud engine is selected and the network drops, dictation fails with a could-not-be-reached error rather than falling back; switch to a local engine in Settings under Voice engine. The cleanup pass uses Auri Cloud by default and needs the network unless you select Auri Local.
Why does Auri Voice type nothing after I speak?
In order of likelihood: the text field lost focus before insertion, the Accessibility permission broke, the selected engine has not finished downloading, or the free 1,111-word allowance ran out, which Auri shows as a notice instead of starting the recording.
Why is the dictation mic missing in a password field?
That is deliberate. Secure fields block dictation and third-party keyboards at the system level so spoken or typed secrets cannot be captured. Type passwords by hand or use a password manager.