Half of solo queue swears by muting everyone and the other half says you're throwing away information. Both are arguing about a command that doesn't do what either side thinks it does.
League of Legends Guide
Does Muting Everyone Help?
What Mute All Actually Does"Just mute everyone" is the single most repeated piece of advice in League, and it's repeated by people who have clearly never checked what the command does. The counter argument (that you're throwing away information your team is giving you) is made by people who haven't checked either.
Both sides are wrong about the same thing. Muting chat and muting pings are two separate commands, and almost all of the value is in the first while almost all of the information is in the second. Once you know that, the argument mostly evaporates.
What Mute All Actually Does
League has a whole family of mute commands and they aren't interchangeable. Almost nobody checks them, and they're all typed into the in game chat box:
| Command | What it silences |
|---|---|
/mute all(also /ignore, /ig, /squelch) |
Text chat only, from every player in the game. Pings still come through. This is the command everyone means when they say "mute all", and it's the narrowest of the three. |
/mutefull all(also /fullmute) |
Text chat and pings, from every player. This is the one that costs you information, and it isn't what most people think they're typing. |
/muteping all(also /mutepings, /pingmute) |
Pings only, chat left on. Almost always the wrong way round, but it exists for the specific case of one teammate spamming the minimap. |
/deafen |
Everything in both directions: all text, pings and emotes from everyone, and it also stops you sending anything. Your allies are notified that you've opted out of communication. |
/muteself |
Stops you typing, without silencing anyone else. Your allies are notified. Useful if the thing tilting you is your own replies. |
All of them work on a single player too (by name or by champion), which is the option almost nobody uses and more people should. And any of them can be undone by typing the same command again, mid game.
The single most useful fact about muting: plain /mute all doesn't touch pings. The most common objection to muting (that you'll miss your jungler telling you something) is an objection to /mutefull, which is a different command that most people have never typed.
The Real Case For It, Which Is Not About Feelings
Muting is usually sold as tilt protection, and that's the weakest case for it. The strong version is about attention, which is the one resource in League you can't buy, farm or build.
Reading costs eye time
Every message you read is a moment your eyes are in the bottom left corner of the screen and not on the minimap. It's a small cost and it happens dozens of times a game, usually at exactly the moments when things are going badly and there's most to look at.
Replying costs much more
Typing a sentence takes several seconds during which your hands aren't on your champion and your attention is entirely elsewhere. Nobody has ever typed a paragraph at a moment when nothing was happening on the map.
Arguments don't end
The reply is never the last message. One exchange reliably becomes a thread that runs until the nexus falls, and it runs on top of the game rather than beside it.
Tilt is real, just secondary
Playing worse because you're annoyed is a genuine effect, and muting reduces it. It's just not the main mechanism, because the attention cost applies even when everyone is being perfectly polite.
The Real Case Against It
The information side deserves to be taken seriously rather than waved away, and you do give some things up:
Genuine callouts do exist
"Their ultimate is down", "I have no summoner spells", "back off, they have vision" are all real and all typed sometimes. Not often, but sometimes, and they're exactly the kind of thing pings can't express precisely.
Plans need words
Deciding as a team to take an objective instead of a fight, or to group instead of split, is easier to say than to ping. Games that are winnable and coordinated are the games where chat is worth the most.
You lose champion select context
A muted lobby means you don't hear that someone has never played the champion they were autofilled onto (information you'd want before the game rather than after).
But almost none of it is lost by /mute all
All three of these survive if you mute chat and keep pings, because the coordination that changes results is nearly all carried by the ping system rather than by sentences.
Pings Are the Actual Communication Channel
League has spent years moving real coordination out of chat and into pings, and the ping system now expresses nearly everything a solo queue team needs to say to each other: danger, on my way, enemy missing, hold, push, take the objective, I need vision here, my ability is ready, and a direct response to any of them.
All of that is spatial. A ping lands on the map, at a location, where your eyes already are. A sentence lands in a text box in the corner, where they aren't. That difference is why muting chat is close to free while muting pings is expensive.
So the ordering isn't a matter of taste. If you're going to silence one channel, silence the one that costs you attention and carries the least. Typing /mutefull all because someone told you to "mute everyone" is how people end up playing worse and then blaming the advice.
The exception is the teammate who pings your minimap forty times in ten seconds (four a second). That's an attention attack rather than communication, and it's what /muteping on a single player is for. Mute that one player's pings, keep everyone else's.
The Version That Actually Works
Blanket muting every game is one option, and a worse one than this:
1. Mute the person, immediately
The moment someone starts, mute that one player and nobody else. It takes a second, it costs you nothing, and it keeps the other three teammates who were going to be normal.
2. Never reply first
The cost is in the reply. If you've already read it, the damage is a second of eye time. If you answer it, the damage is the rest of the game.
3. Keep pings on, always
Unless one specific player is abusing them. Pings are where the real coordination lives and they're cheap to receive because they appear where you're already looking.
4. Set the scope before the game
The in game settings include a chat visibility option that lets you set the scope permanently (everyone, your own team only, or your premade party only). If you want a quieter game by default, change it there instead of typing a command every match.
5. Use /muteself if the problem is you
It isn't a joke command. If you know you're the one who writes paragraphs when things go badly, taking the option away from yourself is a genuine fix, and your team is told you've done it.
6. Report at the end anyway
Muting is a client side setting and it doesn't remove anyone from the end of game report screen. Muting someone and reporting them are entirely separate actions and doing one doesn't stop you doing the other.
What that adds up to is muting as a tool rather than a lifestyle. The blanket version works too, and it's better than nothing if you know you'll argue otherwise. It's just strictly worse than the targeted version for anyone with the discipline to use it.
For what happens to the person on the other end of it, and what the system actually does about chat behavior, our honor and punishments explainer covers the reporting side properly.
What Muting Does Not Fix
Muting removes a distraction. It doesn't add anything.
- It doesn't fix your macro. Nobody has ever climbed because the chat box was empty. The freed attention only helps if you spend it on the map, and most people spend it on watching their own champion.
- It doesn't stop you seeing the game. You'll still watch a teammate walk into the enemy jungle at level three. Muting removes the commentary (the events stay), and for a lot of players the events were always the tilt.
- It doesn't make you a better teammate. A muted player who also stops responding to pings is worse to play with than a talkative one, and that's a real cost to your own win rate.
- It doesn't resolve the game you're already losing. If you're muting on average once per game, the thing worth examining is why so many of your games reach that state.
If you're muting to fix a plateau, the plateau is nearly always somewhere else. Tempo and the fundamentals nobody explains are the two places to look first, and our older list of ways to stop being hardstuck is still good on the mentality half. If you've been wondering whether the problem is your position rather than your play, we went through that separately in which role is easiest to climb on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does muting all in League of Legends help you climb?
It helps by removing a distraction rather than by adding skill. Reading and replying to chat costs eye time and hand time at exactly the moments the map needs both, so muting reclaims attention. It's a variance reducer, not a rank changer, and it only pays off if you spend the freed attention on the map.
Does mute all also mute pings?
No. Plain /mute all silences text chat only and leaves every ping intact. Muting pings as well takes a separate command, /mutefull all, and pings alone can be silenced with /muteping. This distinction is the source of most of the disagreement about whether muting is a good idea.
Will I miss important calls if I mute chat?
Very few. Nearly all coordination that changes results is carried by the ping system, which is spatial and appears on the map where you're already looking. The genuine losses are detailed callouts and pre game context, and all of those survive if you mute chat while keeping pings on.
What's the difference between /mute, /mutefull and /deafen?
/mute silences text chat, /mutefull silences text chat and pings, and /deafen silences all text, pings and emotes while also preventing you from sending anything and notifying your allies that you've opted out of communication.
Can I still report someone I have muted?
Yes. Muting is a client side setting that changes what you see, and it doesn't remove anyone from the end of game report screen. Muting and reporting are separate actions and neither one prevents the other.
Is it better to mute everyone or just one player?
Just the one player, in almost every case. All the mute commands accept a single player by name or by champion, so you can silence the person who's actually the problem without losing the three teammates who were going to be normal.
How do I turn chat off permanently instead of typing a command every game?
The in game settings include a chat visibility option that sets the scope of what you see, choosing between everyone, your own team only, or your premade party only. Changing it there applies to every game, which is a cleaner solution than retyping a command each match.
Do you mute by default, mute reactively, or leave everything on? Tell us in the comments.
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