iPhone Dictation Not Working in WordPress? 10 Fixes That Work

Short answer: If iPhone dictation is not working in WordPress, open the post and tap inside a paragraph block so the keyboard appears, then use the mic key on the keyboard. The app has no dictation of its own, and your words are not live until you tap Publish or Update.

The idea for a post arrives on the train, the WordPress app is on your iPhone, and saying the draft would take two minutes. So you open the app and look for a mic, and there is none. Or you tap the post and no keyboard appears at all. Or your opening paragraph becomes the title. Or the post opens as a grey box that says the block is not supported. Or the draft reads perfectly on the phone, and that evening the site still shows last week's version.

Four facts about WordPress on iPhone explain almost all of it. First, on iPhone the mic that types lives on the keyboard, the keyboard only appears when a text field has the cursor, and much of the WordPress app is lists and menus, not fields to type in. Second, a post is not one text box. It is a title above a stack of blocks, and only some of those blocks take text. Third, WordPress on a phone is more than one app and often more than one site, and each keeps its own sign-in. Fourth, what you dictate is a change on your phone until it has been uploaded to the site, and readers do not see it until you tap Publish or Update.

So most WordPress dictation problems on iPhone are about getting a cursor into a text block, having the right keyboard on screen and making sure the change reached the site, not about your microphone. This guide goes through every cause in order, starting with the most common. If dictation is failing in every app on your phone and not only in WordPress, start with our complete guide to iPhone dictation not working instead. The same fixes apply on iPad, and the apps are updated regularly, so exact button names and positions may differ a little from what you see on your screen.

First, which WordPress are you in?

On an iPhone, working on a WordPress site can mean several different things, and a fix that works in one of them may not apply in another.

• The WordPress app. The app for writing and managing the posts and pages of a site.
• The Jetpack app. Made by the same company, with the same editor for posts, plus extras such as statistics and notifications for sites that use Jetpack. For dictation the two behave alike.
• The dashboard in Safari. You can also sign in to your site's dashboard in a browser on the phone. It is the desktop editor on a small screen, with its own toolbar and its own buttons to save, publish and update.
• A store app. If your site sells things, product descriptions may be edited in a separate store app, with its own fields and its own way of saving.

Then there is the question of which site. Each app can hold several sites and shows one at a time: your own blog, a client's site, the company site. A site hosted for you and a site you host yourself can sit side by side, each with its own sign-in. The app remembers the site you used last, so check the site's name before you start a long post.

How dictation reaches WordPress on iPhone

It helps to know the path your voice takes, because every fix below is about one stage of it. When you tap the mic on a keyboard, the keyboard records you, turns your speech into text and hands that text to whichever app currently has the cursor. WordPress never hears your voice. It only receives text, exactly as if you had typed it. There is no dictation setting inside the app and no plugin to install on your site.

That has three consequences. If WordPress shows no keyboard, there is no mic to tap, so the problem is the screen or the block you are on. If a keyboard appears but has no mic key, the problem is a setting on the phone or something connected to it. And if the text appears but is not on your site later, the problem is saving and publishing, not your microphone. Sorting your symptom into one of those three buckets saves a lot of time.

The 30-second Notes test

Before you change anything in WordPress, rule out the phone itself. Open the Notes app, tap into a new note and tap the mic key on the keyboard. Say a full sentence, such as "The first thing to know about sourdough is that the starter does most of the work."

• Words appear in Notes: dictation works on your phone, so the problem is something specific to WordPress. Carry on with the fixes below.
• No mic key, or nothing happens: the problem is the phone, not WordPress. Go to fix 3 and fix 10, then see our guide to iPhone dictation not working.
• Words appear, but only on Wi-Fi or only on mobile data: the connection is the problem. Switch networks and try again (fix 10).

This single test splits every problem into two groups and stops you from changing settings that were never broken.

The 10 fixes, in order

1. Open the post and tap inside a text block

This is the cause behind most "there is no mic" complaints. The app opens to a home screen for your site, with cards and menus. The Posts and Pages screens are lists. None of those is a text field, so there is no keyboard and no mic. Tap a post to open it in the editor, or tap the button that starts a new one.

Inside the editor, the post is a stack of blocks under a title. A paragraph, a heading, a list and a quote are text blocks: tap inside one and a cursor appears, followed by the keyboard. An image, a gallery, a video, a spacer and a separator are not. Tapping one of those selects it and shows its toolbar, and no keyboard comes up, because there is nothing to type into. If the post you opened begins with a picture, your first tap often lands on that.

Blocks can also sit inside other blocks. A paragraph inside columns or a group may need more than one tap: the first selects the outer block, and the next reaches the text. Keep tapping the words themselves until a cursor blinks among them. On an empty post, tap the placeholder text that invites you to start writing.

Preview is not the editor either. The view that shows how the post will look on your site is for reading, so go back to the editor before you look for the keyboard.

There is one trap on new posts. The title is the first field, and the app often puts the cursor there for you. A paragraph dictated the moment the screen opens can become a very long title, and the title is what the post's web address is built from.

2. Use the mic on the keyboard, not a mic in the app

The mic that types is always part of the keyboard, never part of the app. On Apple's keyboard it sits in the bottom corner of the screen, below the keys. Any microphone you meet inside the app itself belongs to some other feature. If your version of the app offers a way to make a post from a voice recording, that is a feature of its own with its own rules, and it does not put words at your cursor.

This also explains a permission puzzle. If the app asks for access to the microphone or the camera, that is for its own features, such as recording a video or taking a photo to add to a post. Keyboard dictation does not use WordPress's microphone permission at all, so allowing or refusing it changes nothing about the mic on your keyboard.

3. Get a keyboard with a mic on screen

If no keyboard appears, or one appears without a mic key, look at what is selected and at what is connected to the phone.

• A block with no text. With an image or a separator selected there is no keyboard, as in fix 1. Tap a paragraph.
• A Bluetooth keyboard. While a hardware keyboard is connected, the iPhone hides the on-screen keyboard, mic key included. This is easy to miss when the keyboard is in a bag or a tablet case nearby and still paired with the phone. Switch it off, or disconnect it in Settings, then Bluetooth, while you dictate.
• Sign-in screens. iOS forces Apple's keyboard on password fields and offers no dictation there. If the app has asked you to sign in to your site again, type the password, and the usual keyboard returns once you are through.
• Screen Time. If Siri and Dictation are switched off under the content and privacy restrictions in Screen Time, the mic key disappears from Apple's keyboard in every app.
• Managed phones. If the phone belongs to an employer that manages its devices, a policy may allow only Apple's keyboard in work apps. That is a settings rule, not a fault.

If the keyboard on screen is simply one without a mic, tap and hold the globe or smiley key in the bottom corner to switch, or add a keyboard in Settings, then General, then Keyboard, then Keyboards. If a keyboard you installed never appears in that list of choices, our guide to a voice keyboard not showing on iPhone covers the causes.

4. Check the site, the account and your role

Sometimes the post you want is nowhere to be found, or it opens and will not let you change it.

• The wrong site. If the app is showing your other site, the post is not missing. You are looking at a different site's posts. Worse, a draft with a similar name may exist on both, and words dictated into the wrong one look as if they were lost.
• Your role. WordPress gives every user a role. A Contributor can write posts but cannot publish them, so the post is submitted for review and is not public until an editor approves it. An Author can publish and edit their own posts but not other people's. A Subscriber cannot write posts at all. If a post will not let you change it, or there is no way to publish, ask the site's administrator which role your account has.
• A sign-in that has lapsed. A site can sign the app out when a password changes or a security setting steps in. The app may still show posts it loaded earlier while being unable to save anything new. If saving keeps failing, sign in to the site again.
• Two versions of one post. If the post was changed on a computer after your phone last loaded it, the app can be holding a different version from the one on the site, and it may ask you which to keep. Choose with care, because only one of the two contains what you just dictated.

5. Deal with blocks the app cannot edit

The editor in the app understands the standard WordPress blocks. It does not understand everything a site can contain.

• Blocks from plugins. A block added by a plugin on your site may appear in the app as a box marked as unsupported. You can see that it is there, but you cannot type in it.
• Page builder layouts. A page made with a page builder plugin is stored in that builder's own format. In the app it can appear as a single block or a run of codes, and editing it there risks breaking the layout.
• Older posts. A post written years ago in the classic editor can open as one large block of a different kind, which the app may offer to convert into ordinary blocks before you edit it.
• Locked or shared pieces. Some blocks are locked by the site's design, and a pattern that is shared across many pages changes everywhere when it is changed in one place. Be sure which one you are in before you add a paragraph to it.

In each case there are two sensible routes. For text that only has to sit beside the awkward block, add a new paragraph block above or below it and dictate there. For text that has to go inside it, open the post in the full web editor, either from the option the app offers on the unsupported block or by signing in to your site in Safari. The mic on your keyboard works there in the same way, and if it does not, our guide to iPhone dictation not working in Safari covers the browser side.

6. Leave HTML mode, and close the block search and link box

If you dictated and the words went somewhere strange, the cursor was probably in a field you did not mean.

• HTML mode. The editor's menu can switch a post between the visual editor and HTML mode, which shows the same post as code. Dictation still works there, and that is the problem: a sentence dictated into the middle of the markup can damage a block, and the app may then report a problem displaying that block and offer to recover it. Switch back to the visual editor from the same menu before you speak.
• The block picker. The plus button opens a list of blocks with a search field at the top. If the cursor is there, your sentence is searched for as the name of a block, and nothing matches. Close the picker and tap back in your paragraph.
• The link sheet. Adding a link opens fields for the address and for the link's text. A sentence dictated into the address field becomes a link that goes nowhere. Paste addresses, do not say them.
• A line that starts with a slash. In an empty paragraph, a slash can bring up a list of block suggestions instead of text. Dictation rarely writes one, but a spoken date or a web address can.
• Search. The Posts screen has a search field, and after you use it the cursor can stay there, so the next thing you say becomes a search for a post that does not exist.

In every one of these cases dictation worked. It filled in the wrong box. Clear the field, go back, tap the paragraph you meant, check for the cursor and speak again.

One related surprise: dictation replaces selected text, just as typing does. If a paragraph was highlighted when you tapped the mic, what you said took its place. Undo straight away, with the undo arrow at the top of the editor, a three-finger swipe to the left or a shake of the phone. Then tap once where you want the new words so that nothing is highlighted.

7. Know what Return does, and say sentences only into text fields

In the block editor every paragraph is a block of its own, and Return is what ends one and starts the next. A long dictation with spoken paragraph breaks arrives as a column of separate paragraph blocks. That is how WordPress is meant to work, not a fault. It does mean that a single paragraph can be moved out of order or deleted by itself, so read the whole post back in sequence.

The kind of block decides what your words become. Dictate into a heading and the sentence is a heading, in heading type. Dictate into a list and each Return starts a new item. Dictate into a quote and everything you say is quoted. If your words arrive looking wrong, check which block the cursor was in, and use the block's toolbar to change it into a paragraph.

Then there are the fields outside the body, in the post's settings, and each does something different with a spoken sentence.

• Tags. Commas separate tags, so a dictated sentence with commas in it becomes several tags, each one a fragment.
• Slug. The slug is the end of the post's web address. Spaces, capitals and full stops do not belong there. Type it.
• Categories. Choosing a category opens a list. It is a picker, not a place for sentences.
• Excerpt. This one does take sentences, and it is a good use of your voice: a two-line summary of the post, said aloud.
• Captions and alternative text. Both take sentences too. Describing a picture aloud for readers who cannot see it is quicker than typing the description, and far more likely to get done.

None of this is dictation failing. It is the field doing its job. Use your voice for the fields made of sentences, and type or paste the rest.

8. Tap Update or Publish, and wait for the upload

This is the cause behind "my dictated post is not on the site". What you dictate in the app is first a change on your phone. It becomes part of the site when the app has uploaded it, and it becomes public only when you tell WordPress so.

• A new post. Until you choose to publish, it is a draft. Closing the editor normally asks whether to keep the draft or discard it, and it is easy to tap through that question out of habit.
• A published post. Changes to a post that is already live are not shown to readers until you tap Update. The phone shows your new text either way, which is how the phone and the site come to disagree.
• No signal. The app can hold a post on the phone when there is no connection and upload it later. Until that happens, the post exists only on that phone. Look in the list of posts for a sign that one has local changes or has failed to upload, and open the app again once you are back online so that it can finish.
• A scheduled post. A post given a future date is saved but not visible until that date arrives.
• Pending review. If your role is Contributor, your post waits for an editor (fix 4).
• An app closed in the background. Answer a call or switch to another app for long enough, and iOS can close an app that is waiting in the background. Save the draft before you leave a long dictation sitting behind something else.

If words have gone missing and the post's menu offers a history of revisions, open it. WordPress keeps earlier versions of a post, and the one with your dictated section in it may be a tap away.

In Safari the rules are those of the desktop editor. The page keeps a copy from time to time, but your changes are only safely on the site once you tap the button to save the draft, update or publish, and a tab that is reloaded or closed can take your most recent words with it.

9. Free up the microphone

If the mic key does nothing, or dictation stops the moment it starts, something else is using the microphone. The usual cause is a phone call. You are talking a post through with an editor or a client and want to write down what was agreed while they are still on the line. While a call is live, iOS gives the call the microphone, and no dictation keyboard, Apple's or anyone else's, can record at the same time.

For as long as the call lasts, type or swipe a few words. Dictate the full paragraph the moment the call ends, while the details are fresh. If dictation does not come back, check that the call really ended and is not still running in the background, which the coloured indicator at the top of the screen will show. Our guide to iPhone dictation not working during a phone call goes into this in detail.

A video call, a voice memo or a screen recording can hold the microphone in the same way. A headset is worth a look too. If your iPhone is connected to earbuds or to a car's hands-free system, it may be listening through their microphone, and earbuds sitting in a pocket hear very little. Disconnect them and try again.

10. Check dictation, Full Access and your connection

Finally, check the basics. In Settings, then General, then Keyboard, make sure Enable Dictation is on and that the dictation language matches the language you are speaking. If you use a third-party keyboard with a mic, make sure it is added under Keyboards and that Allow Full Access is on, because it needs that permission to reach its transcription service.

Then look at the signal. Trains, lifts and basements are hard places for a phone, and public Wi-Fi often wants you to sign in again before it passes anything through. Dictation that needs the network will stall on one bar, and so will the upload of your post. Switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data and try again.

If none of that helps, update the app from the App Store and restart the phone, which clears a surprising number of stuck states. If dictation works in Notes after all that and still fails in WordPress, go back to fixes 1 to 5, because the cause is almost certainly the screen you are on, the block you tapped or the keyboard WordPress is being given.

WordPress quirks that look like broken dictation

A few behaviors are easy to mistake for a dictation fault:

• The site still shows the old text. Many sites keep stored copies of their pages so that they load quickly, and a change can take a while to appear. Reload the page. If it still shows the old text, check that you updated the right post on the right site, and that the app finished uploading it.
• The post looks different on the site. Your theme controls fonts, spacing and width on the live site. That is styling, not dictation.
• The summary on the blog page is not what you wrote. If a post has no excerpt, WordPress makes one from its opening words. Dictate an excerpt if you want a different summary.
• A long title made a long address. A post's address is built from its title. If a stray paragraph spent time in the title, check the slug in the post's settings before you publish.
• A name was "corrected". Autocorrect and automatic capitals tidy up what they take to be ordinary prose, which is wrong for a brand name or a product code. Read names back, and switch those settings off in Settings, then General, then Keyboard, if they cost you more than they save.
• Several paragraphs arrived as one block. Spoken text comes as one run unless you break it up. Say "new paragraph" where your keyboard supports it, or tap where the break belongs and press Return.
• Dictation stopped when the screen changed. Locking the phone, switching apps or answering a notification ends a dictation. Open the block again and carry on from where the text stops.

Quick triage

• No keyboard at all: you are on a list, a preview or a block with no text. Tap a paragraph (fix 1).
• You spoke to a mic in the app and nothing was written at the cursor: that mic belongs to another feature (fix 2).
• No on-screen keyboard anywhere: a Bluetooth keyboard is connected (fix 3).
• Apple's keyboard keeps appearing: a sign-in screen or a device policy (fix 3).
• The post is missing, or will not let you publish: the wrong site, or your role (fix 4).
• A grey box says the block is unsupported: the app cannot edit it. Add a paragraph beside it or use the web editor (fix 5).
• Your words landed among code: HTML mode (fix 6).
• Words went into a search field or a link: the cursor was in another field (fix 6).
• Your paragraph is a heading, a list item or a set of tags: the block or the field decides (fix 7).
• The text is on the phone but not on the site: it was not uploaded, updated or published (fix 8).
• The mic key is dead during a call: the call holds the microphone (fix 9).
• Fails in Notes too: iPhone dictation settings, Full Access or the connection (fix 10).

WordPress on iPhone versus on a Mac

Many people draft on the phone and finish at a desk, and dictation behaves differently on each. On a Mac, dictation is not tied to a keyboard on screen. A shortcut or a hotkey types into whichever field has the cursor in a browser tab, and the usual causes of trouble are the title, the code editor, the slash menu and an expired login. We cover those in our guide to Mac dictation not working in WordPress.

On the phone, almost everything comes down to whether a text block has the cursor, which keyboard is showing and whether the change reached the site. Keeping that difference in mind stops you applying a desktop fix to a mobile problem. If your site is also a shop, the same kinds of problems turn up in store apps with their own twists, and our guide to iPhone dictation not working in Shopify shows how they play out there.

A dictation workflow that suits a phone draft

A few habits make spoken drafting faster and safer on a phone:

1. Check the site name, then start a new post. The right site first.
2. Type a working title. It gets the cursor out of the title for good, and it gives the draft a name you can find later.
3. Tap the first paragraph and wait for the cursor. No cursor, no keyboard, no mic.
4. Say the draft straight through. Full sentences, with a new paragraph between ideas. Do not stop to polish.
5. Read it back. Check names, numbers and anything that would be awkward if it were misheard.
6. Save it as a draft and let it upload. A post that exists only on your phone is one lost phone away from gone.
7. Finish at a desk. Headings, links, images and the decision to publish are easier on a big screen.

It is worth the effort 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. A first draft is mostly sentences, which is exactly where that gap pays off, and a draft captured on the train is a draft you do not have to start from nothing at your desk. Our guide to voice typing in WordPress covers the day-to-day workflow once everything is working.

A keyboard with a mic for every block

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

Voice Keyboard Pro is a custom iPhone keyboard with a built-in mic button for dictation in any iOS app, the WordPress and Jetpack apps included. Open the post, tap into a paragraph, tap the mic on the keyboard, 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 WordPress, in your email and everywhere else you type. Like any keyboard, it only appears while WordPress is showing a text field, and WordPress still decides when the text reaches your site, so fixes 1 and 8 still apply. It is hidden while a hardware keyboard is connected (fix 3), and like every dictation keyboard it cannot record while a call holds the microphone (fix 9).

A few features help with writing posts in particular:

• Voice Edit lets you speak a change to fix text, so you can correct a sentence 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 if you publish in a language that is not the one you think in.
• Swipe typing is there for the moments when you cannot speak: in a quiet carriage, in a meeting or during a call.

Setup means adding the keyboard in Settings and allowing Full Access so 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, which matters when what you are dictating is a post nobody else has read yet. 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 app lives in your menu bar: hold a hotkey, speak, release, and the text appears at your cursor. It adds Smart Vocabulary, a personal dictionary with replacement rules for the names you write about, plus Meeting Mode with speaker detection and AI notes, and calendar meeting detection.

Frequently asked questions

Does the WordPress app have voice typing on iPhone?

Not of its own. Dictation that types comes from the keyboard, so you open a post, tap into a text block so the keyboard appears, and tap its mic key. Any keyboard with a mic works, including Apple's.

Why is there no keyboard when I tap my post?

You have probably tapped a block that holds no text, such as an image, or you are looking at a list or a preview. Tap inside a paragraph, a heading or a list until a cursor blinks, and the keyboard will appear.

Why is my dictated text not on my site?

It has not been uploaded, or it has not been published. A new post is a draft until you publish it, a change to a live post needs Update, and a post written without a signal stays on the phone until the app can upload it.

Why does the app say a block is unsupported?

The app's editor handles the standard WordPress blocks. A block that comes from a plugin or a page builder may not be editable there. Add a new paragraph beside it, or open the post in the web editor.

Does WordPress need microphone permission for dictation?

No. Keyboard dictation is handled by the keyboard, not by WordPress. Apple's dictation follows the Enable Dictation setting, and a third-party keyboard with a mic needs Full Access. The app's own microphone permission is for its own features.

Is it the same in the Jetpack app?

Yes. The Jetpack app and the WordPress app use the same editor for posts, so the keyboard, the blocks and the rules about saving and publishing work the same way in both.

Does this work the same way on iPad?

Yes. The apps have the same editor on iPad, and dictation still comes from the keyboard. The one difference is that an attached hardware keyboard hides the on-screen keyboard and its mic key.

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 fix 1 or fix 3: there was no cursor in a text block, or the on-screen keyboard was hidden. If a post you dictated is not on your site, it is fix 8, and the cure is a habit, not a setting: save the draft, let it upload, then publish or update. 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 draft.