TL;DR: On a Mac, Dictation and Siri are two separate switches. Dictation lives under System Settings, Keyboard; Siri lives under System Settings, Apple Intelligence & Siri. Flip them off and Apple's voice features go quiet. But turning them off does not mean giving up voice typing: Infina ($99 once as of July 2026) transcribes entirely on your Mac, no Siri involved, and runs fully hands-free. From a couple of feet away you just say "type" plus your words and they get typed, say "send" and it presses Enter, say "open Notes" and you are in the next app, keyboard untouched.
If you searched for how to turn off siri dictation, you probably hit one of two moments: a privacy prompt you did not love, or dictation popping up when you never asked for it. Both are fixable in about a minute.
This guide walks through the exact toggles on macOS, the separate Siri switch, a quick note for iPhone, and what to use instead if you actually like talking to your Mac.
Why people turn off Siri dictation
The reasons we hear come down to two things.
Privacy. When you enable Dictation on a Mac, macOS asks whether you want to share audio recordings so Apple can store audio of your Siri and Dictation interactions (you can click Not Now). And while Apple says general text dictation can be processed on your device on supported Macs, its own documentation excludes dictating in a search box from that, so search dictation is handled by Apple's servers (Apple's Dictation guide, checked July 4, 2026).
Accidental triggers. The Dictation keyboard shortcut is easy to hit by mistake, and suddenly a microphone icon is listening in the middle of your document. If it keeps happening, turning the feature off is a reasonable response.
Neither reason means voice input is a bad idea. It means Apple's implementation was not built around your privacy posture or your workflow. More on the alternative in a moment; first, the steps you came for.
How to turn off Siri dictation on a Mac
Dictation is a Keyboard setting, not a Siri setting. Here is the path, from Apple's own Dictation support page as of July 4, 2026:
- Click the Apple menu, then System Settings.
- Click Keyboard in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down).
- Go to the Dictation section and turn it off.
That is the whole job. The Dictation shortcut stops doing anything, and the microphone pop-up stops appearing.
While you are in that section, note that the microphone source and the keyboard shortcut are configurable there too. If your only complaint is accidental triggers, changing the shortcut to something you never hit by mistake is a lighter fix than turning Dictation off entirely.
Turning off Siri is a separate switch
Turning off Dictation does not turn off Siri, and vice versa. They are different features with different toggles.
To turn Siri off, per Apple's Siri guide as of July 4, 2026:
- Open System Settings.
- Click Apple Intelligence & Siri in the sidebar (called just Siri on older macOS versions).
- Turn Siri off.
With Siri off, the "Hey Siri" voice activation, the menu bar icon, and the keyboard activation stop working. Siri requires an internet connection to work at all, which is itself a hint about where your requests are processed.
If you want Apple's voice features fully quiet, flip both switches. Two settings panes, two toggles, done.
What about iPhone?
Briefly, because the Mac is our focus: on iPhone, go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, and turn off Enable Dictation (Apple's iPhone dictation guide, checked July 4, 2026). The microphone key disappears from the keyboard.
Siri on iPhone is again a separate setting. The pattern is the same as on the Mac: dictation and Siri are different features, so check both if privacy is the goal.
Turning off dictation does not mean giving up voice typing
Here is the part most "how to turn off dictation" guides skip: the problem is rarely voice typing itself. Talking is still three times faster than typing for most people. The problem is who processes the audio and when the mic listens.
Infina is a Mac dictation app built the way privacy-minded people wish Apple Dictation worked. By default it transcribes your speech entirely on your Mac, using NVIDIA's Parakeet model on the Apple Neural Engine. Your audio never leaves your device, it works offline, and privacy mode is on by default. No Siri, no search box asterisk, no "share your audio recordings" prompt. We wrote up the full architecture in our private dictation guide.
And the trigger problem is solved at the root. Nothing listens until you act:
Push-to-talk. Hold the Option key, speak, release. The mic is live only while you hold the key, so accidental activation is physically hard.
Hands-free, when you choose it. Double-tap Cmd to toggle hands-free mode (it is experimental and off by default, and we say so honestly). Then the loop runs by voice: say "type" plus your words and Infina types them, say "send" and it presses Enter, say "open Cursor" and you are in the next app. Prompt, send, switch, repeat, from 2 to 3 feet away using the built-in mic. No other dictation app completes that prompt, send, and switch-apps loop hands-free in plain English. The hands-free listening runs on-device too, so nothing is sent anywhere while it waits.
That loop is why people who prompt Claude Code or Cursor all day use it to dictate and send messages on Mac without touching the keyboard. And you do not need any special hardware: the built-in mic is genuinely enough, as we cover in our guide to the best mic for dictation on a Mac.
The base product is raw, fast, English-only dictation, by design. If you want polished prose or more languages, the optional $10/month cloud add-on (with its own 7-day free trial) handles that, and cloud stays strictly opt-in.
Infina is $99 one-time as of July 2026, Mac only, Apple Silicon required for the on-device models, with a 7-day no-questions money-back guarantee. Details on our pricing page. For a feature-by-feature comparison with the built-in option, see Apple Dictation vs Infina.
FAQ
How do I turn off Siri dictation on my Mac? Open the Apple menu, choose System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar, go to the Dictation section, and turn it off (Apple's Dictation guide, checked July 4, 2026). This disables the dictation feature and its keyboard shortcut. Siri itself is a separate toggle.
Does turning off Dictation also turn off Siri? No. Dictation and Siri are separate features with separate settings. To turn Siri off, open System Settings, click Apple Intelligence & Siri in the sidebar (just Siri on older macOS versions), and turn Siri off (Apple support, checked July 4, 2026).
Why does dictation keep popping up on my Mac? You are almost certainly hitting the Dictation keyboard shortcut by accident. You can change the shortcut in System Settings, Keyboard, in the Dictation section, or turn Dictation off entirely in the same place.
Is Apple Dictation private? Partly. Apple says general text dictation can be processed on your device on supported Macs, but dictating in a search box is excluded and handled by Apple's servers, and enabling Dictation prompts you about sharing audio recordings with Apple (Apple support, checked July 4, 2026). If you want a stronger guarantee, use a tool that is on-device by default.
Can I still voice type with Siri and Dictation turned off? Yes. Third-party dictation apps do not depend on Apple's Dictation or Siri toggles. Infina, for example, transcribes entirely on your Mac by default, works offline, and is triggered by holding Option or by an optional hands-free mode, so nothing listens until you act.
Does Infina use Siri? No. Infina has no Siri integration and no Apple server dependency for transcription. By default speech is transcribed on your Mac by NVIDIA's Parakeet model on the Apple Neural Engine, and cloud processing exists only as an optional $10/month add-on.
The bottom line
Turning off Siri dictation on a Mac takes two toggles: Dictation under System Settings, Keyboard, and Siri under System Settings, Apple Intelligence & Siri. One minute, done, and the paths above are Apple's own, checked July 4, 2026.
Just do not let a privacy decision cost you the fastest input method you have. Voice typing without Apple's cloud is a solved problem.
Infina keeps every word on your Mac by default, triggers only when you hold a key or opt into hands-free, and runs the full type, send, and switch-apps loop by voice. $99 once as of July 2026, 7-day refund if it is not for you.