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How To Dictate Offline on a Mac with Dictation (Intel & Apple Silicon Macs)

Nick Mead
How To
14

If you want to use macOS Dictation to dictate offline on a Mac, here we explain how to do it on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

If you’re using an Apple Silicon Mac then you can dictate offline with macOS Dictation as long as your language is supported for “On Device” dictation.

If you’re using an Intel Mac however, the situation is a bit more complicated as we’ll explain.

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How To Dictate Offline on Apple Silicon Macs

Dictation offline is activated by default in macOS Dictation on M-series Macs.

This includes any text dictation such as composing messages, notes and anything that is not dictated into a search box.

M-series Macs also allow you to dictate any length of text without it timing-out which can be an annoying problem when using it on Intel Macs.

When you activate dictation on an Apple Silicon Macs, you will be prompted whether you give consent for your dictations to be sent to Apple’s servers.

macos dictation siri

If you deny this by clicking “Not Now”, all of your dictation will be processed on your Mac offline.

Can You Dictate Offline On an Intel Mac?

With the release of macOS Catalina, Apple removed the free “Enhanced Dictation” feature which allowed you to dictate offline on Intel Macs.

This means that by default, anything you dictate on an Intel Mac is sent to Apple for online translation by the Siri engine. This obviously isn’t ideal if you’re dictating confidential documents or want to protect your privacy.

The only way to dictate offline on an Intel Mac is if you’re running macOS Mojave where the “Enhanced Dictation” box in Dictation preferences is still available.

In Intel Macs still running macOS Mojave, the Dictation preferences look like the panel below.

You simply go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation and check the box Enhanced Dictation in order for macOS to download the language packs necessary to dictate offline. enhanced dictation mac

In macOS Catalina onwards, the Dictation preferences look like the panel below. As you can see, the “Use Enhanced Dictation” option has been removed.

dictate offline mac catalina

There’s also no way of configuring useful formatting commands such as “new paragraph” and “left indent” when using Dictation on Intel Macs using macOS Catalina and above.

Dictation will also turn itself off after 30 seconds if no voice is detected, whereas in Mojave, it stayed active until you turn it off yourself. This is not a problem on Apple Silicon Macs.

If you are still using macOS Mojave, to dictate offline you can simply go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Voice Control and check the box Enable Voice Control.

mac catalina dictation voice control

This will then automatically download the language packs you need to dictate offline in the latest versions of macOS.

The English language pack is around 422MB in size so you’ll need to make sure you have plenty of storage space available.

If you click on the Commands… button, you’ll also see all the different formatting voice commands possible too.

You can also activate and deactivate Voice Control by clicking on the floating Voice Control Microphone. You can then control this by saying “Wake up” or “Go to sleep”.

What’s Voice Recognition Like in macOS?

The voice recognition in macOS Dictation has never been brilliant, although it’s not terrible either.

The main problem is that it never learns to adapt or recognize your voice or vocabulary like professional dictation software.

The other issue is that whilst it uses Siri for US English which does a pretty good job of transcribing, it still uses the same inferior Enhanced Dictation engine for other languages (such as UK English) for which the results are much poorer.

One of the main problems is there’s quite a delay in non US English languages between the time you speak and the time it takes to transcribe.

The recognition accuracy is also far worse and our advice to users in the UK is to select US English as your language of choice as you’ll get far better results than selecting UK English.

In fact the US English dictation accuracy in the latest versions of macOS has improved a lot.

Voice Control of your Mac meanwhile works much better in macOS than dictating a document and if you just need Voice Recognition for this purpose, it’s faster and more accurate at controlling your Mac than previous versions of macOS.

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Nick Mead
Nick founded MacHow2 in 2013 and has a bachelor's degree in Journalism. Nick started life as a tech journalist and created MacHow2 mainly to help users like himself that had switched from Windows to macOS (and never looked back). Since then the site has evolved into one of the biggest independent online resources for Mac users new and old. You can follow him on X or get in touch via email below or the contact form at the top of the site.

14 Responses

  1. Thanks Nick ,that confirms my notions . I have a 2017 macbook pro which I reinstalled mojavi on ,after apple stole the feature with catalina !

    Reply

  2. I tested the offline function on two m1 macs running monterey in shops, while am waiting for the new mbp. Got quite disappointed, cause the second, I switched wifi off, voice to text stopped. The mic symbol still reacts, but the cursor is not moving (tested notes and pages). Once wifi is enabled, dictation was possible again.

    So my dream of offline dictation like on ios or ipad os seems to be over?

    Reply

    1. For US English, the latest versions of macOS including Monterey use Siri for Voice Control and dictation which only works online. Other languages still use the older “Enhanced Dictation” system which works offline.

      Reply

  3. If you’re using Voice Control, it’s using Siri, which means the privacy concerns that lead you to that solution are not resolved as it is still sending contacts and other data (like what podcasts you listen to) to Apple’s servers.

    Reply

    1. This is true for US English but for other languages, Apple claims that your Mac still uses the Enhanced Dictation feature used in earlier versions of macOS.

      Reply

  4. So creating a virtual machine produced a very laggy low-res entity, the solution to which was high effort for MacOS on a VM. Instead, what we did was create a new partition on the Mac’s drive, then created a bootable USB Mojave installer and used it to install Mojave on the partition. The installer must be on a bootable USB as Apple does not allow installers for older versions of Mac OS to be run from the OS.

    Enhanced dictation then works and you have access to your files…but Bruh.

    Reply

  5. Hi, Thanks for your response.

    In my view, and Steve Jobs’, computers should operate like consumer products. You switch them on, they work. Always. Without hiccups.

    The analogy is a carpenter. His old hammer worked fine, but the new, shiny expensive one he just bought just broke. He doesn’t know what model his last hammer was, and doesn’t care WHY his new one broke. He just wants–actually needs–it to work. I will probably ask one of my sons to install the whatsitsname on the watchamacallit as you suggest.

    I also note how Catalina dictation still has another unfortunate characteristic that has been appearing in Dictation for many years, and has never been fixed. When you dictate a longer paragraph, if the buffer gets full–or there’s a delay–it types, then suddenly DELETES what you’ve just dictated. It also does this on occasion if a phrase is repeated. Types it our for a moment, then the cursor just zooms back and deletes all of it. So you have to start again. So Apple has removed a useful feature but never fixed this INFURIATING bug.

    BTW I also tried to log in to Machow2 to post a reply but this didn’t work via Facebook, Gmail, or WordPress. When I tried to upload a response in Brave, it just hung.

    Software developers really do need to follow their users, see what’s going on, and most importantly, fix their bugs.

    Reply

  6. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work well at all. The microphone blinks and ‘hears’ speech, but only a small portion of text is actually dictated, and accuracy is poor. Go back online and hey presto!–it’s working.

    The previous Enhanced (offline) dictation worked fine, and was ideal for someone like me who needs it when on the move. Because in the real world, gigabit Internet just isn’t always available.

    I shudder every time Apple releases a new OS version. I rely on dictation, and they screw it up with every new release. Invariably it goes non-responsive, leaving me in a blind panic, and unable to work, meet deadlines and feed my family until there’s some patch or workaround available.

    Why the perennial obsession with taking away useful, free features and replacing them with over-complicated, expensive and unreliable ‘enhancements’?

    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Give me back enhanced dictation!!

    Reply

    1. Thanks for sharing your experience. Which version of macOS did you find offline dictation worked better in? If it was Mojave, you could always try rolling back to it or use Boot Camp or a virtual machine to install it on a partition on your Mac.

      Reply

  7. Thanks for this mate, weird how Apple profess to protect users privacy but want access not only to what you dictate, but also your contacts and location in order ‘to provide a more accurate service’.

    If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck then it must be a duck.

    Reply

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