Dictate not working on ATV 4K

I’m located in Ireland too and mine also stopped working just before Christmas. CompuB replaced both remote and AppleTV so it’s not the hardware.

Its either a bug in TvOS, or Apple just randomly decided to nix dictation for regions that don’t have Siri.

At any rate, change your region to the UK and it’ll start working again.

I've spoken to senior Apple advisers who have told me that this is because dictation is linked to Siri regional availability. I don't personally buy it because dictation was working fine in my region for the 4 months after I had bought it - and it just randomly stopped working without any change. I think its a bug in TvOS.

The issue was resolved for me when I switched my region to the UK (just my AppleTV region, not my iTunes account). Strangely when I switched my iTunes account to the UK and turned Siri off, I still had the issue - but this only resolved when I changed the region too.

I fixed it by changing Region to US.

It has to be a bug, it worked before where I am (Ireland) and stopped working before christmas. We don't have Siri on the Apple TV in Ireland but dictate always worked so they are not linked. Changing region works but I can't buy iTunes content if i do that.

I'm based in Ireland, this was not an issue on the Apple TV up to about 4 months ago, have tried everything. Apple told me it was a bug and to wait for an iOS update. 3 updates have come and gone with no fix. At this point I'm looking at Chromecast with Google Assistant as a working system.

I am experiencing the same issue. To fix the problem temporarily, go to Settings->General->Dictation

Turn off and On again. Works for me but i’m only able to do 1 voice search and it stops working again. Apple needs to fix this asap.

I played around on the ATV 4K last night and the dictate function is working fine now.

I changed my region, was South Africa, to United States and now it works 100%.

Don't know what the reason is but I really think it must be the latest software update.

Thought I should share this, maybe it works for someone to.

Thanks, does changing the region have any adverse effect (like switching the store from ireland to the UK)?

Doesn’t look like it. But to be honest I just went the whole hog and and made a UK iTunes account in order to use Siri and all the other features fully.

Just found a permanent* fix. Go to settings->General->Privacy->Location Services.

All apps using location services are listed under “Apps”

Turn location services off for each individual app and test voice search. If it works, turn on location services for apps(1 at a time) testing voice search for each turn-on. When voice search stops working, the last app you turned on is the problematic 1. Keep it off.

Hope this works for you as it did for me

I have the same issue. I have removed all apps and did 'n reset with update. Everything was working fine until now. I think fault is with latest IOS update.

My apple tv does exactly the same. Come on Apple, get your act together and fix this problem.🙏🏻

Based on this thread, I deleted Accuweather and it all came back to life! Interested that one application can have that effect on others.

Scrap that. It stopped working on the second attempt. 🙄