[FEATURE] Make voice dictation timeouts configurable (15s silence auto-stop, 2min max recording)
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 4 comments · opened Jul 5, 2026
Feature description
Voice dictation in the Claude Code CLI currently has two hard-coded limits (per https://code.claude.com/docs/en/voice-dictation.md):
- Recording auto-stops after 15 seconds of silence
- Recording ends after 2 minutes total
Neither limit is configurable — there is no settings.json key and no environment variable for them.
Problem
When dictating longer prompts (describing a task, thinking out loud, formulating a multi-part request), both limits get in the way:
- 15 seconds of silence is short when you pause to think mid-sentence — the recording cuts off and you have to restart dictation and stitch the input together.
- 2 minutes total is quickly reached for anything beyond a short instruction.
Proposed solution
Make both timeouts user-configurable, e.g. in settings.json:
{
"voice": {
"silenceTimeout": "30s",
"maxRecordingDuration": "5m"
}
}(Exact naming/nesting up to you — env vars would also work.) Reasonable upper bounds are fine; the point is that the current defaults are too tight for longer dictation and cannot be adjusted at all.
Context
- Related but different: #30761 asks for a continuous listening mode; this request is just about making the existing limits configurable.
- Platform: macOS, Claude Code CLI (TUI)
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3 Comments
Note: I'm hitting this in the Claude desktop chat client (not Claude Code), but it looks like the same underlying dictation limits apply, so I wanted to add our use case here.
We use Claude constantly in our team to work through our processes by dictating our thoughts, and we keep getting cut off mid-sentence. It really breaks the flow when you're talking through something longer.
To be fair, it's already a big improvement that dictation keeps running at all now. Previously you could only dictate once, and the moment the dictation ended the microphone icon just disappeared, so you couldn't dictate for longer than a short burst. So thank you for that.
But the current limits are still too tight for real work. When you're thinking out loud and formulating a longer, multi-part request, the silence stop and the total time limit get in the way constantly. Being able to raise these (e.g. 5 minutes total) would make a huge difference for people who dictate a lot.
Please make these timeouts configurable - and ideally in the desktop chat client too, not only in Claude Code.
Adding a real-world use case: voice dictation is my primary way of driving Claude Code in the Windows desktop app, and the 2-minute max recording cuts me off regularly. I tend to pace around the room while I talk, so walking back to the desk to re-trigger dictation every 2 minutes really breaks the flow. A configurable max duration (5 minutes would fully cover my use) plus a configurable silence timeout would make this feature perfect. +1
I find this infuriating as there is not noise indication to let you know it has stopped, so you can easily go past 2 minutes without noticing. Anthropic should fix this ASAP.