iPhone Dictation Not Working in Google Slides? 10 Fixes That Work

Short answer: If iPhone dictation is not working in Google Slides, open the slide for editing, then double-tap the text until a cursor blinks. The mic lives on the keyboard, and a single tap only selects a box. Google's Voice type speaker notes tool is not in the iPhone app.

You are on the train with a deck due at ten, and there are three slides that still need words. You open the presentation in Google Slides on your iPhone, planning to say the points and not thumb them in. You tap a slide and it gets a border and a small menu, but no keyboard. Or you go looking for the Voice type speaker notes tool you use on your computer and cannot find it in any menu. Or the keyboard does appear, you dictate a full sentence, and the text shrinks until nobody at the back of a room could read it.

Three things about Google Slides on a phone explain almost all of it. First, the app has no voice typing of its own. The tool you may know from a computer does not exist on iPhone, so the only microphone is the one on your keyboard. Second, there are two layers between you and a cursor. A presentation opens as a deck of slides, where a tap selects a whole slide, and a slide is a canvas of objects, where a tap selects a box without opening its text. Third, Slides has several states in which nothing can be typed at all: a presentation that is playing, a file you can only view, and a preview that is not really the Slides app.

So most Google Slides dictation problems are about getting a cursor into the right piece of text, not about your microphone. This guide works through every cause in order, starting with the most common. If dictation is failing in every app on your phone and not only in Slides, start with our complete guide to iPhone dictation not working instead. Most of what follows applies to Google Slides on iPad as well.

How dictation reaches Google Slides on iPhone

On iPhone, dictation comes from the keyboard. You put a cursor in some text, the keyboard slides up, you tap the mic key and speak, and the words arrive at the cursor as if you had typed them. Google Slides cannot tell the difference between a sentence you typed and one you said.

That gives you a simple rule for diagnosing almost everything in this guide. If there is no keyboard on screen, there is no mic to tap, and the question is why Slides has not opened any text for editing. If the keyboard is up and the mic is missing or does nothing, the question is about the keyboard and the phone. The first group is by far the larger one.

The 30-second Notes test

Before you change anything, open the Notes app, create a new note, tap in the body so that the keyboard appears, then tap the mic key and say a sentence.

• If dictation fails in Notes too, the problem is dictation on your iPhone, not Google Slides. Go to fixes 9 and 10.
• If it works in Notes and you were looking for a voice button inside Slides, start with fix 1.
• If a tap puts a border around a slide or a text box but no keyboard appears, go to fixes 2 and 3.
• If a tap or a swipe moves to the next slide, go to fix 4.
• If you want to dictate speaker notes and cannot find where they go, go to fix 5.
• If nothing in the file responds to editing at all, go to fixes 6 and 7.
• If the keyboard appears but has no mic, go to fix 8.
• If your words arrive but look wrong on the slide, see the list of quirks further down.

The 10 fixes, in order

1. Use the keyboard mic, because Slides has no voice button on iPhone

On a computer, Google Slides has a tool called Voice type speaker notes in the Tools menu. It works in the Chrome browser, and it writes into the speaker notes only. People who rely on it at their desk reasonably expect to find it on their phone, and spend a while hunting through menus for it.

It is not there. The Google Slides app on iPhone has no voice typing tool, for notes or for anything else. That is not a fault with your phone or your account, and no setting turns it on. On iPhone, the mic key on the keyboard does the whole job, and it has one advantage over the desktop tool: it types wherever the cursor is, so titles, bullets, text boxes, table cells, comments and speaker notes are all fair game. Everything else in this guide is about getting that keyboard on screen with a cursor in the right place.

2. Open the slide for editing

When you open a presentation, the app shows you the deck: your slides laid out as thumbnails to scroll through. At this level a tap selects a whole slide, ready to be moved, copied or deleted, and in most versions of the app a small menu appears with an option to edit the slide. Nothing on the slide can take a cursor yet, because you have picked up the slide and not anything on it.

Tap the option to edit the slide, or double-tap the slide itself, and it opens on its own with the editing tools along the top of the screen. Now the objects on it can be selected. This first step is easy to miss, because a selected slide looks as though it ought to be ready for typing. If you see a border around the whole slide, you are still at the deck level.

3. Double-tap until a cursor is inside the text

Inside the slide editor, one tap selects an object. The text box gets an outline and handles so that you can move or resize it. That is selection. There is no cursor in it, so the keyboard stays down. Double-tap the text and Slides puts a cursor inside it and raises the keyboard. Now there is a mic.

A few details trip people up:

• Placeholder text. A new slide shows prompts in its title and body that invite you to add text. Double-tap one and the first word you dictate takes the place of the prompt. That is how it is meant to work.
• Existing text. Double-tapping real text often selects the word under your finger. If you dictate now, that word is replaced. Tap once more at the point where you want the cursor, so that nothing is highlighted, and then speak.
• Shapes and tables. A shape can hold text, and so can each cell of a table. Double-tap the shape or the cell to get a cursor inside it.
• Images, charts and videos. These hold no text. Words that are part of a screenshot are pixels, and a chart's labels come from its data. To caption one, add a text box from the insert button at the top of the screen, which looks like a plus sign, and double-tap the new box.
• Text that belongs to the theme. A company name in the corner or a footer on every slide is usually part of the theme behind the slide. You can see it, but you cannot select it from the slide, and editing the theme is a job for Slides on a computer.
• Small targets. If your double-tap keeps grabbing the wrong object, pinch to zoom in on the slide first.

Keep your other fingers off the slide while you talk. A tap outside the text box ends the edit, the keyboard drops, and dictation stops mid-sentence.

4. Stop presenting first

While a presentation is playing, the screen belongs to the show. Taps and swipes move between slides, and there is no keyboard at all. It is easy to end up here without meaning to, because the play button sits at the top of the screen beside the tools you were reaching for.

Leave the presentation using the close control on screen, and you are returned to the deck. Then open the slide and double-tap the text. The same applies when you are presenting from the app to a meeting or to another screen. Those views show slides, notes and controls, and none of them is an editor. If you spot a typo in the middle of a talk, the fix has to wait until you stop presenting.

5. Show the speaker notes before you dictate them

Speaker notes are the best use of dictation in any presentation app, because they are meant to sound like speech. In the iPhone app they are also hidden until you ask for them. With a slide open, open the More menu, the three dots at the top of the screen, and look for the option that shows speaker notes. The exact wording and position vary between versions of the app. A notes area appears with the slide, and a tap inside it gives you a cursor and the keyboard.

If you cannot see a notes area after turning it on, try holding the phone upright, since landscape leaves very little room below a slide. Then check where the cursor is before you speak. With notes showing, the slide and the notes area are both on screen, and a stray tap on the slide moves you out of the notes. Notes also belong to one slide each. When you move to the next slide, tap into its notes area again before you carry on, or the next paragraph has nowhere to go.

6. Open the deck in the Slides app, not a preview

Where a presentation opens depends on how you got to it. Tap a link in Mail or Messages and it may open in Safari. On a phone, the browser version of Google Slides is built for viewing and presenting, with little or no editing, so taps on text do nothing useful and the keyboard never comes up. Open a deck from the Google Drive app without the Slides app installed, or tap a PowerPoint attachment in Mail or the Files app, and you may be looking at a preview, which lets you swipe through slides but not change them.

The fix is to get the file into the Google Slides app itself. Install the app if you do not have it, then use the option to open in the app, or open the Slides app and find the presentation in its file list. You will know you are in the right place when a tap on a slide selects it and the editing tools appear.

7. Make sure you can edit this presentation

If the deck is open in the app and still no text will take a cursor, look at how it was shared with you.

• You have view-only access. You can read the deck and present it, but you cannot change a word, by typing or by voice. The app usually says so near the top of the screen and may offer a way to ask the owner for edit access.
• You have comment-only access. You can add comments, and you can dictate them, because a comment box is an ordinary text field with a keyboard. You cannot change slide text or notes. Google Slides has no suggesting mode to fall back on, so comment-only really does mean comments.
• You are in the wrong Google account. People with both a personal and a work account often open a shared work deck while signed in to the personal one. Tap your profile picture and switch accounts.
• It is a PowerPoint file. Slides can usually open and edit a PowerPoint file directly. If text behaves strangely, save a copy in Google Slides format and work in that.
• You are offline. Slides saves your changes to Google's servers as you go. If you have no connection and the file has not been made available offline, you may not be able to open or edit it. Make the deck available offline from its menu while you still have signal.
• Someone else is editing too. In a shared deck, other people's changes arrive while you work. If a slide is moved or deleted while you are dictating into it, check afterwards that your text ended up where you meant it to.

If you only need your own version to work on, making a copy gives you a deck you can edit freely.

8. Get a keyboard with a mic on screen

Once a cursor is in the text, the keyboard is up and the mic should be on it. If it is not, check which keyboard you are looking at. If you have more than one installed, the globe key cycles between them, and a long press on it shows the list. Apple's keyboard shows its mic when dictation is enabled. Many third-party keyboards have no mic of their own, and one that does usually needs Full Access switched on before its mic responds.

If Apple's keyboard is showing in an ordinary text box and still has no mic, dictation is switched off or restricted on your iPhone. Fix 10 covers the settings, and our guide to a microphone button missing from the iPhone keyboard goes through every cause in more detail.

9. Free up the microphone

Dictation needs the microphone to itself. A phone or FaceTime call, a video meeting in another app, or a recording app still running in the background can all keep hold of it, and dictation may refuse to start until they let go. This one catches people who are fixing a slide during the very call they are about to present on. End the call or stop the recording, then try again.

Headphones are the next suspect. If the mic key does nothing, or dictation starts and gives up at once, disconnect your Bluetooth earbuds or headset and test with the iPhone's own microphone. If that works, the problem is the headset connection, not Google Slides. Our guide to iPhone dictation not working with AirPods walks through the headphone side.

10. Check dictation on your iPhone

If dictation failed in Notes too, the problem is on the phone. Open Settings, go to General, then Keyboard, and make sure Enable Dictation is on. If the switch is missing or greyed out, check Screen Time: under Content & Privacy Restrictions, open the allowed apps list and make sure Siri & Dictation is allowed. A work or school iPhone may also restrict dictation through its management profile.

Make sure the keyboard language matches the language you are speaking, since dictation follows the active keyboard. Dictation can also depend on a connection: many recent iPhones handle some languages on the device, but other languages and older phones need the internet. Then install any pending iOS update, update Google Slides from the App Store, and if nothing else has worked, restart your iPhone. A restart clears stuck audio sessions and keyboard processes in one step.

Google Slides quirks that look like broken dictation

• The text got smaller as you talked. In many themes the title and body shrink their text so that everything fits. A dictated paragraph does fit, at a size nobody can read from a seat. The fix is fewer words on the slide and the rest in speaker notes. The text fitting setting itself is easiest to change in Slides on a computer.
• The end of your sentence runs off the box. A text box that does not shrink its text lets the overflow spill past its edge, sometimes off the slide. Nothing is lost. Cut the wording down, or select the box and drag a handle to make it bigger.
• Every "new line" made a new bullet. In a bulleted body, Return starts a new bullet, and so does a spoken "new line". Once you know that, it is useful: you can dictate a list one point at a time. Our guide to dictating bullet points and lists has more on this.
• Your words replaced what was there. If text was highlighted when you started speaking, the first word you said replaced it. Tap once inside the text to place the cursor before you dictate.
• Your words went into a comment. If a comment box was open, that is where the cursor was. The text may still be sitting there, unposted.
• The keyboard is covering the text. On a phone the keyboard takes up much of the screen, most of all in landscape. If you cannot see your words arrive, turn the phone upright or zoom out a little before you start.
• Dictation stops halfway through your notes. iPhone dictation stops when you pause for a moment, and thinking about what to say next involves pauses. Our guide to iPhone dictation that keeps stopping explains what you can do about it.
• Every title ends with a full stop. iPhone dictation adds punctuation automatically, which suits sentences better than headings. You can turn off Auto-Punctuation under Settings, General, then Keyboard, or delete the full stop by hand.
• A colleague cannot see what you dictated. Edits made on a weak signal can take a while to reach other people. Give the app a moment on a good connection before you assume the text is gone.
• Names and product terms come out wrong. Client names, product names and abbreviations are the words dictation mishears most, and a slide shows them in large type to a room full of people. Our guide to why iPhone dictation gets words wrong covers the causes.

Quick triage

• You cannot find Voice type speaker notes: it is not in the iPhone app. Use the keyboard mic. Fix 1.
• A whole slide is selected, with no keyboard: you are at the deck level. Open the slide. Fix 2.
• The text box is selected but there is no keyboard: it needs a double-tap. Fix 3.
• A tap or swipe moves to the next slide: the presentation is playing. Fix 4.
• There is nowhere to put speaker notes: they are hidden. Fix 5.
• Nothing responds, and there are no editing tools: a preview, or the browser version. Fix 6.
• The editing tools are there, but no text will open: view-only or comment-only access, or the wrong account. Fix 7.
• Keyboard is up, but no mic: the wrong keyboard, or dictation is off. Fix 8.
• Mic starts then stops at once: microphone busy, or Bluetooth. Fix 9.
• Fails in Notes too: iPhone dictation settings. Fix 10.

Google Slides on iPhone versus Google Slides on a computer

On a computer, Slides runs in a browser, and you have a choice of microphones: Google's Voice type speaker notes tool in Chrome, which covers the notes only, and your computer's own dictation, which types wherever the cursor is. The usual traps there are a selected box with no cursor in it, a click that left focus on the filmstrip, and microphone permissions for the browser. On iPhone there is no Google voice tool and no browser layer. Everything runs through the on-screen keyboard, so the first question is always whether a keyboard appeared. Our guide to Mac dictation not working in Google Slides covers the desktop side, and our guide on how to dictate in Google Slides covers setup on both.

If your decks move between apps, the same kinds of problems turn up elsewhere with their own twists. We have guides to iPhone dictation not working in Keynote, which adds a reading view, and to PowerPoint. For Google's other apps, see the guides to Google Docs and Google Sheets on iPhone.

A dictation workflow that suits slides on a phone

• Put the headline on the slide and the talk in the notes. Dictation makes it easy to say a lot. A slide is the wrong place for most of it, and speaker notes are the right one.
• One bullet per breath. Say a point, say "new line", say the next point.
• Work one slide at a time. Open a slide, dictate its title, its body and its notes, check them, and only then move on. Jumping between slides means more taps to get a cursor back.
• Type names and figures by hand. A client's name or a revenue number is quicker to type correctly than to dictate and then check.
• Read every slide back at full size. Zoom out so that the whole slide is on screen, and look for text that has shrunk, wrapped badly or run out of its box.

It is worth getting right, because speaking is much faster than typing. Most adults type around 40 words per minute on a full keyboard, and even professional typists usually sit around 80 to 100, while normal speech runs at 130 to 150 words per minute. On a phone keyboard the gap is wider still. Speaker notes show the difference most clearly, since notes for a whole talk are a few minutes of speaking and a long session of thumb typing.

A keyboard with a mic for every slide

Apple's dictation is free and built in, but it stops when you pause, it depends on settings that are easy to switch off by accident, and fixing a misheard word means going back into a small text box and editing by hand.

Voice Keyboard Pro is a custom iPhone keyboard with a built-in mic button for dictation in any iOS app, Google Slides included. Double-tap a text box, tap the mic and speak, and your words are added at the cursor. Because it is a keyboard and not a feature of one app, it works the same way in Slides, Docs, Mail and everywhere else you type. Like any keyboard, it only appears once Slides has opened some text for editing, so fixes 2 to 7 still apply.

A few features help with presentations in particular:

• Voice Edit lets you speak a change to fix text, so you can correct a misheard name in a title without selecting and retyping it on a small screen.
• Two-way translation while dictating, across 24 languages, lets you speak in one language and write in another, which helps when a deck is for an audience that reads a different language from the one you think in.
• Swipe typing is there for the moments when speaking out loud is not practical, such as the quiet minutes before a talk begins.

Setup means adding the keyboard in Settings and allowing Full Access so that it can reach the transcription service. Our guide to enabling Full Access for an iPhone keyboard explains what that permission does. On privacy, our servers store only operational pings. No audio and no transcript content is stored. There is a free tier with daily limits, and Pro is $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year. On a Mac, the same product lives in your menu bar: hold a hotkey, speak, release, and the text appears at your cursor in Google Slides or anywhere else.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google Slides have voice typing on iPhone?

No. Voice type speaker notes is a tool for Chrome on a computer, and it is not in the iPhone app. On iPhone you dictate with the mic on your keyboard, which types into whichever text has the cursor.

Why is there no keyboard when I tap a slide?

A tap in the deck selects a whole slide, and a tap inside a slide selects a text box. Neither puts a cursor in any text. Open the slide for editing, then double-tap the text to bring up the keyboard.

How do I dictate speaker notes in Google Slides on iPhone?

Open a slide, open the More menu at the top of the screen and turn on speaker notes. Tap inside the notes area, then tap the mic key on the keyboard and speak. Tap into the notes again after you move to another slide.

Can I dictate while I am presenting?

No. While a presentation is playing there is no keyboard, and taps and swipes change slides. Stop presenting, make your change in the editor, and start again.

Why did my text shrink when I dictated a long sentence?

The title and body on many slides are set to shrink their text so that it fits the box. Use fewer words on the slide and move the detail into speaker notes.

Can I dictate if I only have comment access?

You can dictate comments, because a comment box takes text like any other field. You cannot change slide text or speaker notes until the owner gives you edit access.

Does this work the same way on iPad?

Mostly, yes. Google Slides on iPad uses the same tap to select and double-tap to edit, and it has no voice typing tool of its own either. There is more room on screen, but the mic key works the same way.

What to do next

Run the 30-second Notes test, then work through the fixes that match what you saw. For most people it is one of the first four: they were looking for a voice tool that the iPhone app does not have, the slide was selected but not open, the text box was selected but not open, or the presentation was still playing. If the keyboard appears and the mic does not, it is fix 8. And if you want dictation that works the same way in every app on your phone, try Voice Keyboard Pro's free tier on your next deck.