What is live typing, and should I turn it off?

Live typing decides whether your words appear on screen as you speak them, or all at once after you finish. It is off by default, and the switch is under Settings → Typing.

#The two states

• On: words appear while you are still talking.
• Off (recommended): nothing appears until you finish. There is a short pause, then the finished text is typed at once.

#Why off is the default

One clean result at the end is more reliable for longer dictation than words that appear and are then corrected as you go. With live typing off, every dictation is transcribed by the speech model once you finish, using your Vocabulary.

#If you turn it on

Two more rows in Settings → Typing start to matter, and both only apply while live typing is on.

• Re-check against your Vocabulary. On, which is the default: once you finish, Dictate Safe checks what it typed live against your Vocabulary and corrects names it misheard. This adds a few seconds. Off: what appeared while you talked is kept as typed.
• Fix only the words that changed. On, which is the default: Dictate Safe moves through the text with the arrow keys and replaces only the corrected words. Off: it deletes back to the first corrected word and types the rest again. Turn it off if an app you dictate into handles the arrow keys unusually.

Either way, a correction only ever touches what this dictation typed. Text that was already there before you started is left alone.