Message/Dictation -not transcribing contact names. Is this a "feature" or a bug?

[mkstewartesq@co]

I’ve noticed a weird issue of late where, when dictating Messages, IOS will not transcribe (and instead just skips over) frequently used names (I don't know if it is limited only to names in my contacts).

For example, if my daughter‘s name is Anna, and I dictate a message to her mother to say “did you take Anna to school?“, Messages will instead skip the name and just transcribe “did you take to school?” If I go to type Anna‘s name in manually, the font changes a little bit with something like a hyperlink almost as if it is tagging her – which leads me to believe this must be some unwanted social/tagging function that Apple has added. This happens not only in group chats but also in single person threads where the person whose name I am dictating is the sole addressee (i.e., it's not IOS thinking I am trying to tag a third party to add them to the thread).

Does anyone have any idea how to turn this “helpful” feature off so that when I dictate a message that contains a frequently-used name or name of one of my contacts, it actually inserts the name rather than just skipping over it?

I’ve experienced this both on my iPhone 14 Pro and my iPad Air 4, both running the latest version of iOS/iPadOS.

Thank you.

 

[iStorm]

It's working fine for me, but it is a little slow. In your example, it'll initially transcribe as "Did you take to school", but "Anna" will pop in the right place a couple seconds later after I'm done talking. Does it do the same to you if you give it a few seconds?

There's no way to disable the tagging, but it shouldn't be doing it automatically. If you type the name, it should just stay as text. You can only tag them by tapping the name and selecting the contact, or tapping the name/contact in the keyboard's suggestion bar.

 

[mkstewartesq@co]

It's working fine for me, but it is a little slow. In your example, it'll initially transcribe as "Did you take to school", but "Anna" will pop in the right place a couple seconds later after I'm done talking. Does it do the same to you if you give it a few seconds?

There's no way to disable the tagging, but it shouldn't be doing it automatically. If you type the name, it should just stay as text. You can only tag them by tapping the name and selecting the contact, or tapping the name/contact in the keyboard's suggestion bar.

Thanks for the reply. I do see now that, once I manually deactivate the microphone to stop dictation, the name will in fact magically appear after a second or two (at least two out of the three times I tested it). So thank you- at least I know that it works as intended sometimes, even if not as seamlessly as it did previously.

Mike

 

[mkstewartesq@co]

Actually, not as much ofa fix as I'd hoped for. If I stop the dictation right after the sentence that includes the name, IOS will insert the name. If I don't notice the omission until I've dictated one or more additional sentences, IOS will not insert the missing name when I stop dictation. Hopefully a glitch that will be fixed, not a feature that needs to be worked around.