IOS – How to disable voice dictation on an iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1 or later

iosiphonevoice-dictation

When the keyboard is active on my iPhone 4S (running jailbroken iOS 5.1.1 / 6.1.1), there is a key between the space bar and the numeric entry toggle. This key has a microphone on it and tapping it opens voice dictation.

How do you prevent this key from showing up?

Note that the instructions at http://osxdaily.com/2012/05/04/turn-off-dictation-on-ipad-iphone/ do not work; the Keyboard menu does not contain a Dictation toggle.

Best Answer

There are four things that you can try:

Disable Siri

You can disable Dictation by disabling Siri. Navigate to Settings > General > Siri and turn Siri "Off".

Update PList File

However, understandably, you may want to use Siri, and since you have a jailbroken phone, this appears possible by editing a .plist.

As per this MacRumors post, edit the file /User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboard.plist. Edit it to add the following lines inside of the <dict> block:

<key>DictationOnSpaceKey</key>
<false/>

Update a different file

Using iFile, edit the file /Users/Library/ConfigurationProfiles/UserSettings.plist

Set restrictedBool > allowDictation > value to Off or false. It should look like this:

<key>allowDictation</key>
<dict>
  <key>value</key>
  <false/>
</dict>

Install "NoDictation"

NoDictation is a free jailbreak tweak available from the BigBoss repos (available by default on most iOS jailbreaks). If neither of the previous options work, it may.

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