Using dictation responsibly

Check before you send

Speech recognition is very good, but not perfect. It can mishear words, names, and numbers, or get punctuation wrong. Always read your text before you send or rely on it.

Not for emergencies or high-stakes records

Don't rely on Local Keys alone for emergencies, medical, legal, financial, or safety-critical information. If a mistake could cause harm, check every word yourself.

Recording other people

Local Keys records only when you tap the mic, and the audio is processed on your iPhone. Some places require everyone in a conversation to agree before it's recorded — follow the laws where you are and don't record people without their permission.

Driving

Don't dictate while driving or whenever it would take your attention away from what you're doing.

Battery and the orange dot

While "stay ready" is on, iOS keeps the microphone available and shows the orange dot. Local Keys listens only after you tap the mic. Keeping it ready all day uses some battery; you can set it to turn off after a period of no use.

Speech models

The speech models are made by NVIDIA and Apple and provided under their own licences (see About & Credits). They're provided as-is: accuracy varies with accents, languages, background noise, and microphones. Published accuracy figures come from the models' makers, not from our own testing.