In this post, we will walk you through the process of disabling Speech Recognition in Windows 11/10. Speech Recognition is a technology that is used for controlling computers using voice commands. With Speech Recognition you can say commands that the computer will respond to, and you can also dictate text to the computer, which eliminates the requirement of typing the words in any text editor or word processing software.
Speech Recognition feature, allows you to communicate with your computer. You can improve your computer’s ability to better understand your own voice, to improve upon the diction accuracy. However, to improve its accuracy, you have to ‘train the feature’. If you haven’t found its performance satisfactory, follow the instructions given below to disable it.
Disable Speech Recognition feature in Windows 11
Windows 11 has changed quite a lot with the Accessibility section. Many new options have been added and the existing options have changed positions. Same is the case with accessibility involving speech recognition. The procedure to disable the Speech Recognition feature in Windows 11 is as follows:
- Right-click on the Start button and select Settings.
- In the Settings menu, go to the Accessibility tab on the list on the left-hand side.
- In the right-pane, under the Interaction column, please select Speech.
- Here, you can turn OFF the switch associated with Windows Speech Recognition.
Alternatively, Windows 11 offers a shortcut to turn ON/OFF speech recognition. It is Winkey+Ctrl+S.
Disable Speech Recognition in Windows 10
To disable Speech Recognition in Windows 10, open Settings > Ease of Access > Speech, and toggle on or off Turn on Speech Recognition to enable or disable this feature.
Disable Online Speech Recognition feature
Online Speech Recognition lets you talk to Cortana and apps that use cloud-based speech recognition.
1] Via Settings
Windows 11
The procedure to disable online speech recognition is somewhat different from the one explained earlier.The procedure to disable online Speech Recognition is as follows:
Right-click on the Start button and select Settings.
Go to Privacy & security >> Speech.
Turn OFF the switch for online speech recognition.
Windows 10
To disable Online Speech Recognition in Windows 10:
- Click on ‘Start’ and select ‘Settings’.
- Navigate to the ‘Privacy’ section.
- Switch to ‘Speech’ and from the right pane slide the toggle to turn off the feature under ‘Online Speech Recognition’.
Speech services exist on your device as well as in the cloud. It is because Microsoft collects essential information from these services to improve the user experience. So, to stop this, turn off the ‘Getting to know you’ option as well under ‘Inking and typing Personalization’.
2] Via Registry Editor
Open the ‘Run’ dialog box by pressing Windows+R in combination. In the empty field of the dialog box type ‘regedit’ and hit ‘Enter’.
Next, navigate to the following address-
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Speech_OneCore\Settings\OnlineSpeechPrivacy
Check the default value of HasAccepted in the right pane of the window.
- HasAccepted = 1, indicates the Online Speech Recognition is enabled.
To disable the feature permanently, double-click on the key and change the D-word value from 1 to 0.
Kindly bear in mind, even if you are running 64-bit Windows, as in my case, you should still create a 32-bit DWORD value.
Restart your computer again to allow the changes to take effect.
Hereafter, you should not find the Windows Speech Recognition feature enabled in Windows 11/10.
Is Speech Recognition enabled or disabled on the system by default?
In Windows 11, Speech Recognition feature is disabled by default. This is why most users wouldn’t be able to use the text to speech feature either. A lot of other controls would be disabled. If you wish to enable Speech Recognition by yourself, you would have to set it up for the first time. Most users wouldn’t really need speech recognition and thus it is a part of the Accessibility section. It is very helpful for differently-abled people.
Read: How to Turn On or Off Touch keyboard typing sound in Windows 11
Why would you need to disable the Speech Recognition feature?
While the Speech Recognition feature is disabled by default, a few third-party software products can enable it. Since it couldn’t be a hindrance for you, you could consider disabling it as explained above. If you wish to disable it permanently so no software could enable it, the Registry Level method has been explained.
Microsoft has rolled out a native Voice Dictation feature with Windows 11/10 now. This tool can translate your spoken words into text, and it works in any app where there is a text input, and can also be used on the desktop to launch settings and other things.
How do I stop the Voice or Speech Recognition from popping up?
You can use Settings or the Registry to stop this behavior. Open REGEDIT, navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Speech_OneCore\Settings\OnlineSpeechPrivacy
and change the DWord value HasAccepted to 0 as explained in this post.
