iPhone Dictation not working iOS 16

Dictation doesn't work. In any app. For anything. In any way. I cannot dictate a text. I cannot dictate a search. It's like the phone doesn't hear my voice when I press the microphone button. I can speak on the phone, but I cannot use any other voice-activated features. This started happening a week or so ago, after upgrade.

see the red circle in the photo? That's all I get. Little blue spinning circle.

What other info do you need?

Wanted to add...so I had heard about others switching the languages from English (US) to English (UK) for both the keyboard and Siri. Indeed switching to English (UK) on the keyboard worked but its not a real solution since they use different spellings. That being said (and I know this isn't too technical) but I switched through all the English options, (India, Canada, Australia) and after going through all just for the keyboard...it somehow fixed the English (US) setting for both the keyboard and Siri. Mind you simply going once from English (US) to English (UK) and back to English (US) wasn't enough. Some combination of trying all them "fixed" something somehow as both are now working for me again. Come on Apple, you have to do better than this!

Partial solution for non-English: I noticed problems appearing in non-English dictation. Thankfully English hasn’t stopped working but quality is much worse. For other languages that stopped working: First I noticed in apps like Duolingo that speech recognition didn’t work for German but at least before 16.0.3 Spanish still worked and German worked only from the keyboard. After 16.0.3 Spanish and German from the keyboard stopped working and didn’t work in other apps like DeepL. I followed all the steps toggling the settings, resetting network connections etc. I removed all the keyboards except English and tried different locations (Switzerland, Spain, Latin America, US Spanish etc). But only after changing Siri’s language to German did it start dictating German from the mike on the keyboard & DeepL. This technique didn’t work for Spanish. I couldn’t get it to work no matter what. But the English dictation is significantly degraded in quality since 16. I am a native US speaker of English (without a regional accent) and it is much worse now. At least I was able to get German to work again and it stayed that way even though I changed Siri back to English. But apps like Duolingo still don’t recognize speech. But notes and Siri at least recognize English and German but still it’s unfortunate that Spanish is still broken.

Under Language and Region, I changed my preferred language to French. Phone soft refreshed to the new language then I changed it back to English. This fixed both issues with siri and dictation.

I’m also having this issue but with a weird twist- I use it with three languages: English (primary language) and French have stopped working, but German still works!! I’m so beyond frustrated, I use dictation CONSTANTLY.

I depend on dictation in English, German, and French. After the update to iOS 16.0.2, English and German dictation work poorly, French doesn’t work at all. Updated to 16.0.3 today, still the same. It’s driving me crazy.

For 16.0.3 I was able to get German back by deleting German keyboards, turning off all the networks, rebooting and adding them again and changing Siri to German. After testing it it worked. I was even able to reset Siri to English and it still recognizes German but that didn’t work for other languages and some apps like duolingo are still broken—only the keyboard mic works. But it’s something.

The dictation accuracy of IOS 16 is very poor. My friends and I compared the dictation accuracy of IOS 16 with that of IOS 15: We activated dictation on both phones, held the phones side by side, and spoke into the phone. IOS 15 spells the speech correctly, but IOS 16 gets it wrong.

This needs to be fixed urgently.

Just spent over an hour with Apple customer service. tried turning off and on all kinds of things, nothing helped. Suggested workaround is to add the English UK keyboard until they figure it out or get an update out. Super disappointing. I rely on dictation heavily.

I too, have the same problem, dictation has stopped and all I get is the spinning blue circle. Siri also returns a "working on it..." followed by "something went wrong." Iphone13 using iOs 16.0.2 and dictation has stopped working about a week after install. I am on the road constantly and depend on dictation for 90% of my daily tasks. This past week I have even been involved in a car accident because I was forced to manually enter text into my maps gps while on the highway. I have called my cellular provider and have combed the web for troubleshooting and have checked every setting and confirmed they are as they should be, and have even done a reset 3 separate times. Apple is far too large of a conglomerate to allow a software issue like this to remain unresolved. As you can see from my recent situation, it is literally becoming dangerous to users and others around them. Whatever new product, design, feature, launch you're working on Apple- STOP and put ALL of your developers on this fix! You are creating a massive liability for users!

Hey there, Keither37!

Thanks so much for using Apple Support Communities.

It sounds like you've done some really good troubleshooting so far but we want to help you get this issue resolved with Dictation on your iPhone. However, we're not sure exactly what you're experiencing with regard to Dictation's behavior. We understand that it isn't working as you expected, but if you could share some additional details, it may help the community be more effective at troubleshooting this with you.

In the meantime, please find some troubleshooting steps for general Dictation issues below:

If "Hey Siri" isn't working on your iPhone - Apple Support

If the microphones on your iPhone aren't working - Apple Support

We hope that this information is helpful.

​Have a great day!

Im having the exact same issue. Apple tech support on the phone finally helped me to get Siri to work by turning off and then on all the network settings, and also switching to UK keyboard.

Now I can say “hey siri, send a message to..” and I can dictate, but cannot do so any other way. If I try to dictate in an email or text message, all I get is the small microphone pop up (see below)

I have wasted so much of my day on this. I just did this too, and after farting around for way too long, suddenly the English (US) works again. But now my German keyboard doesn't work (which it did before) and the French (France) still istn't working even after trying all the different French keyboards. Apple, please fix ASAP.

I was able to work around this by removing the English (United States) keyboard from dictation as well as removing English (United States) from language under Siri and search and changed then to English (Australian). It works, unsure why. However, there is no difference.

Same problem here.

little troubleshooting:

-after updating Ios16 worked for a couple of days. then suddenly died (voice dictation, but Siri still worked fine).

-at some point it came back to life (no updates occured)

-in the past days (3-4 days ago) it died again.

I read about an issue with languages: my iphone language is English US menawhile dicatation language is Italian (I'm quite sure if I set both English it works, but I need the otherway!!!)