How to Enable or Disable Voice Clips in Windows 11

This guide explains how to control whether your voice recordings are sent to Microsoft in Windows 11.

Why does Microsoft collect voice clips?

Voice clips are recordings of your speech when you use voice features on your computer. When you use your voice to talk to your PC, Windows speech recognition technology turns those sounds into text. Microsoft uses these clips to train their systems to better understand different voices and accents. This helps make their speech recognition technology more accurate for everyone.

What happens when you change these settings?

Turning this feature off stops Microsoft from collecting and reviewing your audio samples. Turning it on allows them to use your clips to improve their software.

To manage your voice clip settings, follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app. You can do this by pressing the Windows key + I on your keyboard or by clicking Start and selecting Settings.

2. Once the Settings window is open, click on Privacy & security in the left menu.
3. On the right side of the screen, click the Speech tile.

3. On the next screen, ensure the toggle for Online speech recognition is turned on, as this is required for the voice features to work.
4. Look for the section to Start or Stop contributing your voice clips. Click the button to enable or disable this feature based on your preference.

Summary

Windows 11 allows you to choose whether your voice data is shared with Microsoft to help train their speech recognition software. You can manage this through the Privacy & security section of your Settings menu. This ensures you have full control over your privacy and the data your computer shares.

Note: Administrative access is not required to change these specific user privacy settings.

For advanced management of system privacy via command line, you may occasionally need to run terminal tasks as an administrator, such as navigating to C:\Windows\System32 or modifying keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, though those are not required for this specific task.