Caps Lock voice dictation silently fails on macOS — missing speech-recognition entitlement in Claude Desktop binary

Environment

• macOS 26 (Tahoe)
• Latest Claude Desktop

Symptom

Pressing Caps Lock shows the orange overlay, but no audio is ever transcribed. Claude never appears in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Speech Recognition regardless of permission resets or reinstalls.

Root Cause

The Claude Desktop binary at /Applications/Claude.app is missing the com.apple.security.personal-information.speech-recognition entitlement. Without it, macOS silently denies speech recognition access — no TCC prompt is shown and no entry is created in the Speech Recognition pane.

Verification

Run:
codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Claude.app | grep -i speech

Returns no match. Present entitlements include device.audio-input, device.camera, device.bluetooth, device.usb, device.print, personal-information.location, personal-information.photos-library, and virtualization — but no speech-recognition entitlement.

Why the in-app mic still works

The in-app microphone button in the prompt box uses standard audio capture (device.audio-input, which IS present) and transcribes correctly. Only the Caps Lock quick entry path, which per Anthropic's own documentation specifically requires Speech Recognition permission, fails.

Troubleshooting already attempted (all had no effect)

• Granted Microphone and Accessibility permissions to Claude
• Confirmed macOS Voice Control is off
• Confirmed correct input device selected in Sound → Input
• Confirmed Caps Lock not remapped in Keyboard → Modifier Keys
• tccutil reset SpeechRecognition and tccutil reset Microphone + quit/relaunch
• Toggled voice shortcut off/on in Claude settings

Fix required

Add com.apple.security.personal-information.speech-recognition to the code-signing entitlements of the Claude Desktop macOS binary.

Reference

Similar entitlement regression previously affected Claude Code (anthropics/claude-code#33023).