Why did my voice dictation stop working?

Voice dictation usually stops working after a software update, a language mismatch, or a permissions change, and the fix is almost always in settings rather than hardware.

Run through five checks. Confirm dictation is still enabled in your keyboard settings. Check the microphone permission for the keyboard. Make sure the dictation language matches the keyboard language. Free up storage if the phone is nearly full, since on-device speech models need room. Then restart.

On iPhone, toggling Enable Dictation off and back on under Settings, General, Keyboard forces the speech model to reload, which resets dictation and clears most stubborn cases. If your dictate function fails only in one app, that app's mic permission is the culprit.

If it keeps breaking, an AI dictation app gives you a mic that does not depend on system toggles.