Dictation keyword phrase on macOS Big Sur

You can enable Siri and ask "enable voice dictation" and "enable voice control" and both will be enabled and the floating dictation icon will appear on your Desktop, where without Siri, you can say something like "show commands" or "show me apple website," as examples.

You can replace the enable with disable in the prior commands to Siri and those features will be disabled.

By default, there is no "Hey Siri" dictation functionality on Big Sur until you visit Accessibility > Voice Control > Enable Voice Control, and then click the Commands… button. The panel that appears has a [+] button for you to create your own custom voice command whose interface appears below:

When I say: Hey Siri

While using: Any Application

Perform : Run Workflow > Other… and select the Siri application in the Applications category and then click Open.

Your custom spoken Hey Siri command will now look like:

and you can click Done.

With Dictation and Voice control active, and when you see the floating microphone, you can say "Show Commands" and see that "Hey Siri" is among them. As long as Sir is enabled in System Preferences, you can then say "Hey Siri" and a dialog will appear with What can I help you with? Speak "what time is it" and you will get a response.

You can tell Siri to disable dictation and disable voice control when you are done.

Feel free to let Apple know.

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Just to add, there is no way to "somehow hide the mic icon".

Duct tape.

VikingOSX wrote:

Duct tape.

I guess you could also paint over it on the screen. 😎

Edit: just to be abundantly clear, j/k. Do NOT paint your screen. 🙂

The method Viking described is the only way I'm aware of.