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. Dictation will also stop automatically if there’s a long stretch of silence.ĭictation works best if you annunciate clearly and speak at a regular pace. 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. In nearly any text entry area other than Search fields, words will start appearing as you speak but the keyboard will remain on screen, with the microphone button highlighted. You’ll notice in Messages, the mic icon is right in the text entry field, replacing the old voice memo button. You start using dictation the same way you would in earlier versions of iOS: just tap the microphone icon in the lower right corner of your keyboard.
Here’s how to make the most of these awesome new dictation features to speed up your typing. Automatic punctuation can add commas, periods, and question marks. As long as you have an iPhone with an A12 Bionic chip or better (that’s an iPhone XS), you’ll be able to seamlessly talk and type or edit, which makes the entire dictation “workflow” a lot smoother. But with iOS 16, the dictation features are taking a huge step forward in usability-so much so that you might actually start using it all the time. You’ve been able to dictate text to your iPhone instead of typing for a very long time, and over the years it has occasionally gotten better.