The two gestures
Gesture | Behavior |
Hold fn | Press and hold, speak, release to insert. Best for short bursts. |
fn + space | Press once to start, press again to stop. Hands-free, for long-form. |
Both are active out of the box.
Cancel
Press Esc during a dictation. Capture stops, nothing is inserted.
Accidental taps
A press shorter than the hold-to-start delay is ignored — no capture, no UI flash. Tune it in Dictation Settings → General → Hold-to-start delay: lower feels snappier, higher ignores more accidental touches.
Pausing the hotkey
Gaming, screen sharing, or anything where you don't want fn intercepted? Use Pause Dictation in the menu bar, or Dictation Settings → General → Pause hotkey. The hotkey passes straight through to the app until you resume.
The quick-task hotkey
Right ⌥ is a separate hotkey that turns speech into an action item instead of typed text. Off by default — see Quick task capture.
Custom hotkeys
The hotkey list in Dictation Settings lets you record additional bindings with hold, toggle, or double-tap gestures. fn hold and fn+space are the bindings active today; a custom binding you add shows "Takes effect in an upcoming update." If you want a different key today, the supported route is remapping at the macOS level — for example System Settings → Keyboard → Modifier Keys to remap Caps Lock to fn.
If fn does nothing
macOS may have the fn/🌐 key bound to the emoji picker or Apple's own dictation. Set System Settings → Keyboard → "Press 🌐 key to" → Do Nothing. See Dictation isn't typing anything.