Offline dictation on iPhone with a voice typing keyboard

By the end of this guide you will be able to dictate on your iPhone with no internet connection, in any app that shows a keyboard. You will first check whether Apple's built-in keyboard dictation already runs on-device for your language, and then set up a voice typing keyboard that works offline in every language it supports and can tidy up what you said.

Why "offline" is the question to ask

Dictation on a phone is easy to take for granted until you are on a plane, in a basement, on a foreign SIM with no data, or writing something you would rather not send to a server. In each of those cases the question is the same: is the speech turned into text on the phone, or somewhere else?

Apple's keyboard dictation answers that question differently depending on your language and your iPhone model. A third-party keyboard that runs its own speech model answers it the same way every time. This guide covers both so you can pick the one that fits.

Route 1: Apple's keyboard dictation

Every iPhone has dictation built into the system keyboard. It is free, needs nothing installed, and for many languages on recent iPhones it runs on the device.

Step 1: Turn it on

1. Open Settings.
2. Go to General, then Keyboard.
3. Turn on Enable Dictation. iOS shows a short privacy note when you do; read it, because it says how your dictation is handled.
4. Tap Dictation Languages and make sure the languages you speak are listed. Dictation follows the keyboard language you are using at the time.

Apple documents the basics on its Dictate text on iPhone page.

Step 2: Dictate

In any app, bring up the keyboard and tap the microphone key (on the keyboard itself, near the space bar on recent versions of iOS). Speak, then tap the key again to stop. You can keep typing while dictation is active, which is handy for fixing a word without stopping.

Say punctuation out loud ("comma", "question mark", "new line") if it does not appear on its own.

Step 3: Check whether your language is on-device

This is the step most people skip. Apple processes dictation on the device for a set of languages on supported iPhone models, and sends audio to its servers for the rest. The note under the Enable Dictation switch tells you which applies to you, and the list of on-device languages changes between iOS versions.

The reliable test takes ten seconds: turn on Airplane Mode, open Notes, tap the microphone key, and say a sentence. If text appears, your language runs on-device. If the microphone key is greyed out or nothing happens, it does not.

Where Apple's dictation stops being enough

• Offline only for some languages. If your language is server-processed, dictation simply does not work without a connection, and your audio leaves the phone when it does work.
• No cleanup step. Hesitations, repeated words and "no, scratch that" all land in the text. You edit by hand.
• Short sessions. Dictation ends after a stretch of silence, so if you pause to think you tap the key again.
• Nothing is kept. Once the text is in the field, that is the only copy. There is no transcript history to search later.

For a two-line reply this is fine. For dictating a long message or a note in a language that happens not to be on-device, it is not.

Route 2: A voice typing keyboard that runs its own speech model

The second route is a custom keyboard backed by an app that runs speech recognition locally. ThinkScribe for iPhone does this with a keyboard called ThinkScribe Voice, and the rest of this guide uses it as the example.

Step 1: Install the app and download a model

Install ThinkScribe from the App Store (iOS 26 or later; the same app runs on iPad with iPadOS 26 or later). On first launch it downloads open-source model weights once. That is the only time it needs the network for speech; from then on recognition runs on the phone.

You can pick between Apple's on-device speech models, Whisper and Parakeet. Language detection is automatic across 90 or more languages, and a picker lets you force one of 28 explicitly supported languages.

Step 2: Add the keyboard

1. Open Settings.
2. Go to General, then Keyboard, then Keyboards.
3. Tap Add New Keyboard and choose ThinkScribe Voice from the list.
4. Tap ThinkScribe Voice in your keyboard list and turn on Allow Full Access.

iOS shows a standard warning whenever any third-party keyboard asks for full access. In this case the permission is needed so the keyboard can talk to the ThinkScribe app on the same phone; the app has no account, no cloud service and no analytics, so there is nowhere for your typing to go.

Step 3: Dictate from the keyboard

In any app, hold the globe key and pick ThinkScribe Voice, or tap the globe key until it appears. Press the dictation control and speak; it is push-to-talk, so release when you are done. The text lands where you were typing.

While you talk, a Live Activity on the Lock Screen shows that the microphone is live, so you always know when the phone is listening.

Why the audio goes through the app, not the keyboard

You may notice that the ThinkScribe app opens, or that the Lock Screen shows it is listening, when you start dictating. That is how dictation works on iPhone: the keyboard hands over to the app, the app listens on the device, and the text lands back in the field you were typing in. Nothing is sent anywhere in between.

Step 4: Use it as a normal keyboard too

You do not have to switch back to Apple's keyboard to type. ThinkScribe Voice includes layouts for 11 languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Greek and Korean), emoji suggestions, a two-level autocorrect, four haptic strength levels, and a spacebar trackpad: slide your finger along the space bar to move the cursor. Three accent themes (Orange, Classic Grey and System Blue) apply to the keyboard and to the whole app.

Tips for better results

• Hold the phone the way you would on a call. Six to twelve inches from your mouth is fine; you do not need to speak into the microphone.
• Speak in full sentences. Speech models punctuate better when they can hear the shape of a sentence than when you deliver one word at a time.
• Dictate first, tidy second. Get the thought out, then fix the two words that came out wrong. Trying to be perfect on the first pass slows you down more than the corrections do.
• Set the language if you always use the same one. Automatic detection is good, but a fixed language removes the odd wrong guess on the first word.

If you want the same workflow on your Mac, the companion guide to voice typing on Mac walks through the global hotkey setup. And if you are weighing on-device against cloud dictation more generally, on-device vs cloud transcription covers the trade-offs.

If you'd rather not maintain this

Frequently asked questions

Does iPhone dictation work offline?

For some languages, yes. Apple processes dictation on the device for a set of languages on supported iPhones and uses its servers for the rest. Check the note under Settings > General > Keyboard > Enable Dictation, or turn on Airplane Mode and try it. A keyboard backed by a local speech model, such as ThinkScribe Voice, works offline in every language it supports.

Why does my voice keyboard open another app when I dictate?

Dictation on iPhone is handled by the ThinkScribe app rather than by the keyboard itself. The keyboard hands over, the app listens with a push-to-talk control (the Lock Screen shows when the microphone is live), and the text is inserted where you were typing. Everything stays on the phone.

Is it safe to allow full access for a keyboard?

Full access is the iOS permission that lets a third-party keyboard communicate with its own app, which is what a voice keyboard needs. The question to ask is where the keyboard sends your data. ThinkScribe has no account, no cloud service, no analytics and no tracking; the only network use is the one-time model download and optional anonymous crash reports that you can turn off in Settings.

Can I dictate in a language other than English offline on iPhone?

With Apple's dictation it depends on whether that language is in Apple's on-device list for your model. With ThinkScribe the answer is yes for any language it supports, because recognition runs on the phone; automatic detection covers 90 or more languages, and 28 can be selected explicitly.