# How to Turn Off [Siri](https://support.apple.com/siri) Dictation on Mac (and Keep Voice Typing) (2026) > How to turn off Siri dictation on your Mac step by step, why the Siri and Dictation toggles are separate, and how to keep private, on-device voice typing without either. Source: https://www.infina.so/how-to-turn-off-siri-dictation Published: 2026-07-04. Last updated: 2026-09-14. Category: How-to. Published by Infina (https://www.infina.so). **About Infina.** Infina runs the whole prompt loop on three spoken words. Say "type" and your sentence and it types. Say "send it", or just "enter", and it presses Enter. Say "open Cursor" and it switches apps. No hotkey, no key held down, no touching the keyboard, from across the room. Not push-to-talk. There is no key to hold to start talking and no Enter to press to send, so prompting an AI tool costs zero keypresses. It runs on macOS (Apple Silicon) and Windows 10 and 11, transcribes on your own computer, and costs $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99, for unlimited words and commands. The Free plan gives 2,000 free words. --- **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 ($8.25 a month, billed annually at $99, 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 it" (or just "enter") 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: 1. Click the Apple menu, then **System Settings**. 2. Click **Keyboard** in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down). 3. 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: 1. Open **System Settings**. 2. Click **Apple Intelligence & Siri** in the sidebar (called just **Siri** on older macOS versions). 3. 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](/private-dictation-app). 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 it" 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](/dictate-and-send-messages-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](/best-mic-for-dictation-mac). The base product is raw, fast, English-only dictation, by design. If you want polished prose or more languages, the optional $5/month cloud add-on (billed annually at $60, with its own 7-day free trial) handles that, and cloud stays strictly opt-in. Infina is a flat $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99 (as of July 2026), on Mac and Windows, with Apple Silicon required for the Mac's on-device models, unlimited words and voice commands, and a 7-day no-questions money-back guarantee. Details on [our pricing page](https://www.infina.so/pricing). For a feature-by-feature comparison with the built-in option, see [Apple Dictation vs Infina](/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](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-dictation-mh40584/mac) 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 $5/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. $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99 (as of July 2026), 7-day refund if it is not for you. --- ## Which app to do this with The steps above work with any of these. They stop being equal the moment you want the keyboard out of the loop. The tools this page covers (Apple Dictation) are at the top. The rest of the field follows, because the right answer is sometimes none of the above. | Tool | Price | Keyboard needed | Pick it if | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **Infina** | $8.25 a month, billed annually at $99, unlimited words and unlimited commands | No. Speak "type", speak the prompt, say "send it" or "enter". | you want to prompt AI tools without touching the keyboard. Say "type" and the words go in, "send it" and the prompt goes, "open Cursor" and you are in the next agent. It is the only one of these that finishes the whole loop by voice in the tools developers prompt in all day. | | Apple Dictation | free, built in | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you dictate a sentence here and there and do not want to install anything. | | Wispr Flow | $15 a month, or $144 a year billed annually | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you need dictation on an iPhone or an Android phone as well as a laptop, or you write in one of 100+ languages. Those are the two things Infina does not ship. | | Superwhisper | $8.49 a month, $84.99 a year, or $249.99 once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you want to pick and swap the speech model yourself, and dictation into a text box is the whole job. It stops where the text box ends: there is no spoken send, and no spoken app switch. | | MacWhisper | 65 euros, paid once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | the job is transcribing recorded audio files rather than talking to your computer while you work. | | VoiceInk | $25 to $49, paid once | Yes. A key to start dictating, Enter to send. | you want plain local dictation at the smallest possible price and you never need your voice to control the machine. | | Talon | free | No, once you have learned its command language. | you want to drive the entire computer by voice, cursor and clicks included, and you are willing to learn a command language to get there. Talon is the serious hands-free tool on this list. Infina goes after the same freedom with three ordinary English words instead of a syntax to learn. | ### The part that is actually different: zero keypresses The mainstream dictation apps (Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, MacWhisper, VoiceInk, Apple Dictation) are all push-to-talk: you hold or press a key to start talking, and you press Enter to send. That is two physical acts on every single prompt. A hundred prompts in a day is two hundred keypresses that exist only to start and stop the tool. Infina removes both of them. Nothing is held, nothing is pressed, and the same loop runs on three spoken words. There are three triggers and there is no fourth. "type" types, "send it" sends, "open" opens and switches apps. The send trigger answers to either wording, "send it" or a plain "enter", whichever you find yourself saying. That is the entire vocabulary: no command language, no grammar, no custom scripts to write, nothing to memorize beyond those three words. **When Infina is not the answer.** If you need dictation on an iPhone, an iPad, an Android phone or Linux, Infina is a Mac and Windows desktop app and there is no phone version. Wispr Flow covers phones. Everywhere else, the difference is the loop. Every other tool in that table types words into a box and stops, leaving your hands to press Enter and pick the next window. Infina finishes it: say "type" and your sentence, say "send it" (or just "enter"), say "open Cursor", and keep going without a key.