How can I speak a text message with ios8. I don't seem to be able to speak and have it converted into a written text message anymore.

1 General

2 Keyboards

3 Scroll to Bottom

4 Enable Dictation

Tap in the message text box so that you get the keyboard. Then tap the microphone next to the spacebar. It works as it always did. The microphone next to the spacebar is new and only for recording audio messages.

Yes, you can in IOS 8. First you tap the the box where you normally write your text, the keyboard will show, now tap the mic on the left of the spacebar to convert your speech to text.

I reset my settings to fix another ios 8 issue, and now there is no mic icon to the left of the spacebar and no way to do speech to text. I deep-sixed the happy faces, but still no mic icon. Any suggestions how to bring it back??

Siri must be on and you need Internet connection.

Thank you! Enabling Siri did the trick of having the microphone re-appear on the keyboard. I doubt I ever would have thought that enabling Siri would be the fix!! When Apple gets round to fixing bugs, it should address this issue. Surely there must a more intuitive way to turn off/on the mic icon feature on keyboard.

Also - It apparently is not necessary for Wifi to be turned on to use the mic dictation feature for messages, notes, email, etc.

Again, my thanks for your assistance.

Thank you! Enabling Siri did the trick of having the microphone re-appear on the keyboard. I doubt I ever would have thought that enabling Siri would be the fix!!

Voice to Text uses Siri, so naturally Siri must be on for it to work.

Also - It apparently is not necessary for Wifi to be turned on to use the mic dictation feature for messages, notes, email, etc.

Siri works on Wi-Fi or using Cellular data to connect to Apple server.

When troubleshooting anything new, it is helpful to remember there are those who know less than the engineer who created the new device, app, software, whatever. For example, it was not obvious - to me, at any rate - that Siri, the seemingly helpful granddaughter of HAL, would be necessary in converting my voice to text.

Who do you think is doing the conversion then? HAL2?

Reading the manual is a good place to start.

I Haven't be able to get mine to work. I have tryed restarting my phone as well as turning Siri on and off. I just gave up on it for awhile. Any advise? When I go to the keyboard there isn't a microphone button like there use to be. I have a iPhone 5s for the record.

You also need to enable voice dictation under Keyboard under General Besides enabling Siri.

There's someone who's paying attention. Thanks...