Dictation in macOS 26.3

TidBITS Talk
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I’m having no luck getting Dictation to work on macOS 26.3 on my m3 iMac (and it didn’t work under 26.2, either). I’ve turned Dictation On/Off, restarted, turned Voice Control On/Off, and tried many combinations. I’ve also restarted in Safe Boot and tried it. Still the same. It doesn’t turn on when I press the Mic key on the keyboard, and it just beeps. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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Any change in another user account?

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TL;DR: the Webroot SecureAnywhere “Secure Keyboard Entry” function interferes with Dictation. Check the “Pause Secure Keyboard Entry” in the menu bar dropdown box, if you want to use Dictation anywhere.

Thanks for asking. It took almost 1.5 hours of a chat and a support phone call with Apple to isolate this.

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