Actions
Microphone and speech
Asked for the first time you tap the record button. If it was refused: Settings, then Vector Actions, then turn on Microphone and Speech Recognition.
Help Center / Permissions and Setup
Permissions and Setup
What to turn on, and what the phone needs.
Calendar
Asked when you choose your calendar in setup, or the first time something needs to go on it. Vector Actions needs Full Access so it can list your calendars by name. If it's off, the app says so rather than quietly doing nothing: Settings, then Vector Actions, then Calendars.
The one-time download
The first time you record, iPhone fetches the speech model for your language. You'll see “Getting speech ready on this iPhone” for up to a minute, and it needs a connection that once. Everything after that works offline.
What the phone needs
Sorting speech into actions, steps, times and categories uses Apple Intelligence: iPhone 15 Pro or newer, with Apple Intelligence turned on in Settings.
Without it, typing, dates, the calendar, steps, categories, repeats and lists all still work, and recordings are kept whole.