Zoom meetings have become the new normal for everything from office meetings to happy hours. But with multiple people on one call, it can get noisy fast. That's why the mute button is one of the most important features on Zoom. Here's a simple guide on how to mute yourself and others during a Zoom meeting so you can have an efficient, professional, and interruption-free video call.
Muting Yourself
The most basic mute feature allows you to mute your own microphone so others can't hear you. This is useful if you need to talk to someone else in the room, take a phone call, or tune into another meeting.
To mute yourself in a Zoom meeting on desktop:
- Click the mute button in the bottom-left corner of the Zoom window. It looks like a microphone icon.
- When muted, the icon will have a red slash through it. Click it again to unmute.
On mobile:
- Tap your name at the top of the participant list.
- Tap "Mute My Audio."
- Tap it again to unmute.
You can also quickly mute and unmute yourself by holding the spacebar down on your keyboard.
The host will see a microphone icon next to your name when you are muted.
Remember to unmute yourself when you want to speak so others can hear you!
Muting Individual Participants
As the meeting host, you can mute specific participants. This is handy when someone forgets to mute themselves and background noise is disruptive. You can mute individuals one at a time or all at once.
To mute one person:
- Hover over their name in the participant list and click "Mute."
- A microphone icon will appear next to their name when muted.
- Click "Unmute" when ready to allow them to speak again.
To mute all participants at once:
- Click “Manage Participants” at the bottom of your Zoom window.
- In the participant list, click “Mute All.”
- Click “Unmute All” when ready to restore audio.
Participants can unmute themselves unless you disable that feature. Select “More” next to a name and click “Disable Mic” to prevent an attendee from unmuting.
Using Mute All On Entry
As the host, you can choose to mute all attendees as they join the meeting. This keeps things quiet until you’re ready to start.
- Go to the Zoom web portal and sign in.
- Click "Settings."
- Navigate to the "In Meeting (Basic)" tab.
- Under the Audio section, select the checkbox for "Mute participants upon entry."
- Click "Save" at the bottom.
Now anyone who joins your meetings will automatically be muted unless you manually unmute them.
For one-off meetings, you can also mute people on entry without changing the global setting:
- After starting the meeting, click “Manage Participants.”
- Click “More” and select “Mute Participants on Entry.”
- To undo this, click “More” and deselect the option.
Muting Notifications and Audio Alerts
Zoom meeting alerts and notifications can also make noise and distract the group. Mute sounds directly from the Zoom client to eliminate interruptions:
- Click your profile picture then select “Settings.”
- Navigate to the “Notifications” tab.
- Disable any sounds under the "Meeting" and "Chat" sections.
- Save your changes at the bottom.
You can toggle these sound effects on or off before each meeting instead of fully disabling them. Just check or uncheck the “Play sound when someone joins or leaves” box at the bottom of the participants panel.
How Supernormal Can Enhance Your Zoom Meetings
While Zoom has built-in mute controls, Supernormal takes it a step further for distraction-free meetings. Supernormal integrates with Zoom to provide real-time transcription, meeting analytics, notes, action items, highlights, and more.
The Supernormal Assistant listens to your meetings and automatically:
- Transcribes the entire discussion so you can stay focused without taking notes.
- Suggests key takeaways, decisions, and tasks so nothing falls through the cracks.
- Creates shareable meeting notes that summarize important points, to-dos, questions, and insights.
- Lets you search transcripts and recordings to find key moments and information later.
This produces professional, organized meeting artifacts that enable smarter collaboration. Try Supernormal today to optimize your Zoom meetings.
Muting yourself and participants is an easy way to remove unwanted noise and disruptions in Zoom calls. Use Zoom’s muting features along with other tools like Supernormal to host engaging meetings that stay on topic. Follow these best practices for muting and you’ll see higher quality discussions with improved outcomes.