How to Mute in "Counter-Strike"
By Seth Amery
Updated September 22, 2017
Unless you're playing in a team with friends, nobody wants to hear background noise or nonsense rabble unrelated to the match. Though all three "Counter-Strike" games offer the ability to mute other players, how to mute those players depends on the version you're playing. While both the original "Counter-Strike" and "Counter-Strike Source" use the same method to mute players, there are some changes to the process with "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive."
Muting Players in Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source
Press "Esc" during a match in either "Counter-Strike 1.6" or "Counter-Strike: Source." You cannot mute other players while you're in the main menu of either game.
Click "Player List" to open a box listing all of the players in the current match.
Click the player you want to mute to highlight the display name. If you want to silence multiple people, you'll need to mute them one at a time.
Click "Mute in-game voice." If you did this correctly, you'll see the word "Muted" appear beside the name and the option to "Unmute in-game voice" instead. Click "Close" when you're done muting players.
Muting in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Press "Tab" to toggle the list of players while playing a round of "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive." As with the other games, you can't do this while you're in the main menu.
Right-click the mouse to make an arrow appear. Otherwise, your cursor will remain hidden and locked to the on-screen gun.
Left-click the name of a player you want silenced. This will open a small drop-down Steam menu where you can click "Block Communications" to mute the player. Depending on your settings, you may need to click "OK" to confirm your choice before you stop hearing the player speak.
Tips
In the "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" main menu, click "Options" followed by "Audio" to view the game's audio options. Change "Enable Voice" to "Disabled," and you won't hear any players in-game.
Press the spacebar while highlighting a name in "Global Offensive" to quickly mute that player. You won't need to click through menus using this method.
In "Counter-Strike: Source" or "Counter-Strike 1.6," you can also enter "voice_enable 0" into the console without the quotes to mute all in-game voice at once. To enable the console, press the "~" key.
To re-enable voice, enter "voice_enable 1" into the console without the quotation marks.
If the tilde key doesn't make the console appear, you might not have it enabled. You can enable the console in the "Options" screen on the main menu in any of the three games.
Warnings
Don't spend too much time muting players; the game won't stop just because you opened a menu.
Blocking communications with a player in "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" means that player can't send you messages on Steam or communicate with you in any other way. If this isn't what you want, you can click "Unblock Communications" before the match ends.
References
Writer Bio
Seth Amery is a long-time writer whose specialties extend to all areas of video games, having written thousands of tutorials, fully-featured strategy guides and reviews across all platforms. His experience also includes one-on-one relationships with major gaming publishers to write previews on upcoming games, establish interviews with game designers and hold early game giveaways.