How do I stop dictation auto-cutting out

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Level 1

5 points

How do I stop dictation auto-cutting out

I've used Dictation fine on a Mac on and off for years and I don't know whether its the latest upgrade to Big Sur that's knackered it - but now it's cutting out as soon as it hears a couple of seconds of silence.

I'm a novelist and often pause for long periods before dictating out the next sentence and I can't find a setting anywhere to either override this or extend the 'silence' period before it cuts out.

It's really annoying and breaks my flow to have to manually reactivate it after almost every sentence.

Any ideas?

MacBook Air

Posted on Feb 7, 2021 7:19 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 9, 2021 11:24 AM in response to Nicola Cook

Hey there Nicola Cook,

We understand dictation is not working as you'd expect. It's cuts off too soon. We'll be happy to help.

To begin, we recommend double-checking the steps you're following to configure and use dictation. Check those out here: Dictate messages and documents on Mac

If you still experience this, let's test the issue in a new user account to see if the same thing happens there. This will let us know if the issue is system-wide or only one account. Create the user with the steps here: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

If the issue persists, let us know how long it takes before dictation cuts off on its own. For example, is it 30 seconds or a minute?

Cheers!

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

124,148 points

Feb 9, 2021 12:39 PM in response to Nicola Cook

Dictation in Big Sur round-trips your voice input to Apple's servers, and if there is unusual system activity on your Mac, excess network traffic at your location, or between you and the Apple servers, this will disrupt the smooth flow of dictation.

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How do I stop dictation auto-cutting out

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