Is there any way for dictation to work on-device for macOS Monterey?

Set up dictation yesterday. Got it working. Woohoo!

Then today, all of a sudden, it doesn’t work. I activate it, the mic icon doesn’t show anything moving. I talk and click “Done”, and I get a “…” graphic, then nothing.

Now the weird part.

Turn on Voice Control. That works fine, and clearly understands me - with the same mic.

Internet connection is fine.

I’m guessing Apple’s servers are having problems, but I also think it’s ridiculous that an M1 can’t process speech on-device. Just like Siri on my iPhone - it will frequently refuse to set timers because it can’t connect to the cloud servers. It’s insane.

Is there any way to handle this on-device, either with Apple’s stuff or a third-party solution?

It should work. It does for me. That said, dictation and voice control seem to be little loved by apple.

Have you looked at the settings, for both? They do need to download voice files for your preferred language.

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