Simply not entering dictation mode is enough to keep it inactive. This is generally not necessary–Apple will sometimes send voice samples back to its servers to improve dictation quality, but the phrases are brief and anonymized, it’s not like there’s an open mic recording your every word. The first will turn off the dictation feature entirely. General > Keyboard and then scroll down to the Dictation section to find them. “Quote … end quote” or “quote … close quote” Just speak them as you talk, such as “In iOS 16 comma dictation is incredibly useful exclamation point”. Here’s a list of some of the most useful formatting commands. While the new auto-punctuation feature (see below) will attempt to correctly insert commas, periods, and question marks, other punctuation can be added just by speaking. There are a host of commands you can give to format text or type special characters. It’s a little different than speaking casually, but it’s worth the effort for the improved speed. Talking tipsĭictation works best if you annunciate clearly and speak at a regular pace. Dictation will also stop automatically if there’s a long stretch of silence. Tap that, or the microphone icon at the bottom of the keyboard, to stop dictating. You’ll notice a small “stop dictating” microphone icon right next to the text cursor. You can double-tap words to select them, press and hold on the space bar to move around the cursor like a trackpad all the usual text entry controls are always right there, you can just speak now in addition to tapping and swiping. Alternate between typing and speaking freely–once you get the hang of it, it’s quite fast.

While you’re speaking, you can switch to typing at any time, then just resume speaking to keep entering text that way.

List of apple dictation commands