To turn off Google voice typing, open any app that brings up your keyboard, tap the gear icon on Gboard’s toolbar, choose Voice typing, and switch off Use voice typing. This removes the microphone key so it stops popping up while you type. On Samsung phones, you can also go to Settings, then General management, then Keyboard list and default, and toggle off Google voice typing there. Both methods take under a minute.
Below you’ll find the exact steps for Gboard, Samsung keyboards, and a few related places where Google’s speech recognition can show up. This article is a spin-off from our full voice to text guide, which covers dictation on every platform if you want the bigger picture.
What Google voice typing actually is
Google voice typing is the speech-to-text feature built into Gboard, the default keyboard on most Android phones. When you tap the microphone key, your speech is converted into text and typed wherever your cursor is. On newer Pixel phones it runs as “Assistant voice typing” with on-device processing, but the idea is the same.
Two things it is not:
- It is not Google Assistant. Assistant answers questions and controls your phone. Voice typing only types text. Disabling one does not disable the other.
- It is not “always listening” in the background. It activates when you tap the mic key. The most common complaint is simpler: the mic key sits right next to other keys, and people hit it by accident mid-sentence.
If accidental taps are your problem, removing the mic key fixes it completely. Here is how.
How to turn off Google voice typing in Gboard
This works on any Android phone running Gboard, including Samsung phones where Gboard has been set as the keyboard.
- Open any app where the keyboard appears, like Messages or a notes app, and tap a text field.
- Tap the gear icon in Gboard’s top toolbar. If you don’t see a gear, tap the four-dot or arrow icon on the left of the toolbar to expand it first.
- Tap Voice typing.
- Switch off Use voice typing.
That’s it. The microphone key disappears from the keyboard, and Gboard will no longer start listening no matter what you tap.
If you can’t reach the toolbar for some reason, the same screen is available through system settings: open Settings, search for “Gboard”, open Gboard settings, then tap Voice typing.
One extra step for Pixel owners: on the same Voice typing screen, check for a separate Assistant voice typing toggle and switch it off too. It controls the faster on-device dictation mode, and on some versions it is a separate switch.
How to remove the mic key without disabling everything
On most current Gboard versions, turning off Use voice typing already removes the microphone key. But some versions split this into two settings:
- Open Gboard settings (gear icon on the toolbar).
- Tap Preferences.
- Look for a Voice input key toggle and switch it off.
This hides the mic key from the keyboard layout while leaving the rest of Gboard untouched. Menu names shift slightly between Gboard versions and Android skins, so if you don’t see this toggle under Preferences, use the Voice typing switch from the previous section instead. The end result is the same: no mic key, no accidental dictation.
How to turn off Google voice typing on a Samsung phone
Samsung phones ship with Samsung Keyboard by default, but Google voice typing is often still installed as a separate input method. To disable it system-wide:
- Open Settings.
- Tap General management.
- Tap Keyboard list and default.
- Find Google voice typing and switch it off.
After this, Google voice typing is no longer available as an input method anywhere on the phone.
Note that Samsung Keyboard has its own microphone button, which uses Samsung voice input rather than Google’s service. If that one bothers you too, open Settings, go to General management, tap Samsung Keyboard settings, and turn off the keyboard toolbar. The toolbar disappears along with its mic button. You can switch it back on the same way whenever you want.
Other places Google speech recognition shows up
Turning off the keyboard mic covers ninety percent of cases, but a few related features cause confusion, so let’s clear them up.
Google Docs voice typing. In Google Docs on desktop, voice typing only runs when you start it yourself from Tools, then Voice typing, and click the mic. Click the mic again to stop, or close the panel. There is nothing running in the background and nothing to permanently disable. If you never click it, it never listens.
Windows dictation. If a dictation panel appears when you press Win+H on your PC, that is Windows voice typing, a built-in Microsoft feature with no connection to Google. Press Win+H again or hit Escape to close it. It only runs when you invoke it.
iPhone dictation. The mic on the standard iPhone keyboard is Apple’s dictation, not Google’s. You can turn it off under Settings, General, Keyboard, by switching off Enable Dictation. If you installed Gboard on iOS, it has its own voice typing toggle inside the Gboard app settings.
Still want dictation, just on your own terms?
Plenty of people turn off Google voice typing not because they hate dictation, but because they want control over when the mic is live. Accidental taps, a mic key that hijacks the keyboard, no clear way to know when listening starts: those are interface problems, not dictation problems.
If you dictate on a Windows PC, a push-to-talk setup solves this cleanly. blablaType is a desktop dictation app built around exactly that idea: you hold F9, speak, release, and the text appears at your cursor in any app, from Word to messengers to your browser. The mic is only active while you physically hold the key, so it can never start listening by accident. There is also an F8 mode that translates what you say on the fly, and a personal dictionary that learns from your corrections, so recurring names and terms come out right. The free trial gives you 7 days of the full product.
And if you are still comparing tools, our roundup of the best dictation software walks through the main options for desktop dictation.
Quick recap
- Gboard: gear icon on the toolbar, then Voice typing, then switch off Use voice typing. The mic key disappears.
- Some Gboard versions: Preferences, then Voice input key off, if you only want to hide the mic key.
- Samsung: Settings, General management, Keyboard list and default, then toggle off Google voice typing. Hide Samsung Keyboard’s toolbar separately if needed.
- Google Docs, Win+H on Windows, and iPhone dictation are separate features with their own controls.
Turning Google voice typing back on later takes the same steps in reverse, so nothing here is permanent. Flip the toggle, and the mic key is back.