Key Takeaways
- The singer recently voiced a complaint about the iPhone’s dictation button and its placement in the Messages app.
- Bieber says he frequently hits the button right after sending a text message, causing a beep that briefly pauses his music.
Justin Bieber is frustrated with Apple’s iPhone dictation button and its placement in the Messages app. The singer’s complaint, which he shared in identical posts across Instagram and X last week, reached tens of millions of users.
The issue centers around the small microphone button in iMessage, which activates voice dictation or voice notes. The button appears before or after sending a text, replacing the send button in iMessage. Bieber says he frequently hits the microphone button right after sending a text, causing a beep that briefly pauses his music and disrupts what he is listening to.
In a now-viral post, Bieber joked that if the dictation button interrupted his music one more time, he would “find everyone at Apple” and “put them in a rear naked choke hold.” He followed the joke with a request: Apple should stop giving the send button multiple functions in the same location and reconsider the layout so users can text and listen to music without accidental interruptions.
“The send button should not have multiple functions in the same spot,” Bieber wrote in an X post that has been viewed over 44 million times.
Bieber illustrated his request with a screenshot of his iMessage screen, with a red circle around the dictation button. His posts drew support, garnering hundreds of thousands of likes across X and Instagram. OpenAI’s head of design, Ian Silber, jokingly invited Bieber to join the company’s weekly design critiques after seeing his posts, and Elon Musk replied to Bieber’s post on X with multiple fire emojis.
If I hit this dictation button after sending a text and it beeps and stops my music one more time,
I’m gonna find everyone at apple and put them in a rear naked choke hold
Even if I turn off dictation I somehow hit the voice note thing
The send button should not have multiple… pic.twitter.com/9R0oKw239L
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) December 6, 2025
Apple has not publicly responded to Bieber’s suggestion.
Bieber’s frustration with Apple arrives as the company is weathering one of its toughest leadership shakeups in years, with several top executives headed for retirement.
Last week, Apple revealed that John Giannandrea, its senior vice president for machine learning and AI strategy, is stepping down and will transition into an advisory role before retiring in 2026. General counsel Kate Adams and environmental policy chief Lisa Jackson are also planning to retire next year.
Another Apple executive is choosing to leave for a competing tech company. Meta announced last week that Alan Dye, who was previously vice president of human interface design at Apple, is joining Meta to lead a new creative studio within the company. Dye has worked at Apple for nearly two decades.
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Key Takeaways
- The singer recently voiced a complaint about the iPhone’s dictation button and its placement in the Messages app.
- Bieber says he frequently hits the button right after sending a text message, causing a beep that briefly pauses his music.
Justin Bieber is frustrated with Apple’s iPhone dictation button and its placement in the Messages app. The singer’s complaint, which he shared in identical posts across Instagram and X last week, reached tens of millions of users.
The issue centers around the small microphone button in iMessage, which activates voice dictation or voice notes. The button appears before or after sending a text, replacing the send button in iMessage. Bieber says he frequently hits the microphone button right after sending a text, causing a beep that briefly pauses his music and disrupts what he is listening to.
