With the development of technology, we are moving towards an era where computing will become more accessible and much more straightforward. Speech recognition technology is part of this progress and makes life easier for users by interacting with their devices via audio commands.
Speech recognition in Windows 10, however, is a hit or miss. Often, the commands are misinterpreted, or the results displayed are not relevant to the search phrase. In addition, recent reports of privacy violations have left a sour taste in users’ minds. This can cause many users to turn off speech recognition in Windows 10.
Turn off speech recognition in Windows 10!
Speech recognition eliminates the need to enter commands to interact with your system manually. With proper training, speech recognition can be used in everyday activities and help many users work effectively on the computer.
However, if you find that speech recognition is useless, you can disable speech recognition in Windows 10. Here, I’ll talk about three possible ways to do this.
Method 1: Turn off online speech recognition
It’s a new feature that allows you to interact with Cortana and other Microsoft cloud services. If you don’t use Cortana or these cloud services, for that matter, you can turn off voice recognition from the settings themselves. Just follow these steps:
- Open settings. You can use the keyboard shortcut Win + I.
- Click on Privacy.
- In the left pane, select Speech.
- In the right pane, slide the switch under Online Speech Recognition

This will disable online speech recognition for your system. Follow these methods if you want to disable the built-in speech recognition software.
Method 2: Turn off speech recognition
Speech recognition in Windows 10 can dictate your commands instead of typing them manually. You can also disable the built-in speech recognition technology in Windows 10. To do this, follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app on your system.
- Click on Ease of Access.
- From the left pane, under Interaction, Select Speech.
- In the right pane, slide the radio button under Turn on speech recognition.

Here you will also find the keyboard shortcut Win + Ctrl + S to enable or disable speech recognition.
Method 3: Use Registry Editor
Registry Editor contains many basic configuration settings for the software and settings installed on your computer. You can make specific changes in Registry Editor to disable speech recognition in Windows 10.
- Open the Run dialog box by clicking Win + R.
- Type regedit and click Login to open Registry Editor.
Click Yes at the User Account Control prompt. - In the address bar, type and press Enter to go to the next path:
Computer \ HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Speech_OneCore \ Settings \ OnlineSpeechPrivacy - In the right pane, locate the DWORD record named HasAccepted.
- Verify the value for the specified DWORD record. If the value is set to 1, it means that you have enabled speech recognition on your system.

6. Change the value to Turn off online speech recognition.
7. Start over your computer for the changes to take effect.
Conclusion
So there you have it. You know how to disable speech recognition in Windows 10 using the methods above. Comment below if you have successfully disabled it on your system and discuss the same thing further.