Mac dictation not working?
Nine fixes, in the order worth trying them. Most people are fixed by the first three. The seventh is not a fix, because the seventh is not a bug — and it is the one that sends people looking for a different app.
We make a dictation app, so treat the last section accordingly. The nine fixes below are for Apple’s built-in dictation and will work whether or not you ever install anything of ours.
1. Check the microphone macOS is actually using
System Settings → Sound → Input. If a Bluetooth headset, a webcam, or a monitor's built-in mic is selected, that is what dictation hears. This is the single most common cause and the fastest to rule out. Watch the input level bar while you speak — if it barely moves, you found it.
2. Turn dictation off and back on
System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation. Toggle it off, wait about ten seconds, toggle it on. This forces macOS to re-register the service, and it fixes the case where the shortcut does nothing at all.
3. Re-download the language model
Still in Keyboard → Dictation, switch Language to something else, let it download, then switch back. A partially downloaded or corrupted model produces the specific symptom of dictation starting and then immediately stopping.
4. Check the microphone permission for the app you're dictating into
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone. Dictation can work in TextEdit and fail in a specific app if that app was denied microphone access. Browsers and Electron apps are the usual offenders.
5. Reset the dictation shortcut
Keyboard → Dictation → Shortcut. Set it to Off, then set it back to your preference. Third-party tools that grab hotkeys — Alfred, Raycast, Keyboard Maestro, Karabiner — routinely swallow the double-press without telling you.
6. Delete the dictation preference file
Quit apps, then remove ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs and restart. macOS rebuilds it. This clears state that survives toggling and is the usual fix for dictation that broke right after a macOS update.
7. Check whether you're hitting the session timeout
This one is not a bug. macOS ends a dictation session when it detects a pause, and in practice people report it stopping after 30 to 60 seconds. If your dictation dies mid-paragraph rather than failing to start, this is why — and there is no setting that extends it.
8. Free up disk space
On-device dictation models need room. Under roughly 5 GB free, dictation is one of the first things macOS quietly stops doing well.
9. Boot into Safe Mode to find the conflict
If dictation works in Safe Mode, a login item or a background app is interfering. Re-enable them in batches until it breaks again. Audio interface drivers and virtual audio devices — Loopback, BlackHole, Krisp — are the frequent culprits.
When none of them hold
If you have done all nine and dictation still frustrates you, it is worth separating two different complaints. “It won’t start” is a fault, and the list above fixes it. “It starts, then quits on me, and it never learns my words” is not a fault — it is what Apple Dictation is.
There is no custom vocabulary, so a colleague’s name or a piece of jargon will be wrong the same way forever. There is no way to extend the session timeout. And there is one model, with no accuracy trade-off to make. Those three are the reasons people go looking, and no amount of resetting preferences changes them.
FreeFlow was built around exactly those gaps: push-to-talk and hands-free modes with no timer, a personal dictionary you teach once, and five models to pick between. It still runs entirely on your Mac, like Apple’s does — that part Apple got right.