Muting
Moderators can mute individual participants or all participants at once to maintain control over the audio environment. BigBlueButton also supports automatic muting when participants join, which is recommended for larger meetings.
Muting an Individual Participant
You can mute any participant directly from the participant list:
Click on the participant's name in the participant list.
Select Mute from the context menu.
The participant's microphone is immediately muted. They can still hear everything but cannot speak.
The muted participant's microphone icon changes to a red crossed-out microphone, making their status visible to everyone.
Muting All Participants
To quickly silence all participants at once:
Click the gear icon above the participant list.
Select Mute all from the dropdown menu.
All participants except moderators are immediately muted.
Moderators are never affected by the "Mute all" action. Only regular participants and guests are muted.
Mute on Entry
BigBlueButton can be configured so that new participants automatically join with their microphone muted. This prevents background noise from disrupting the meeting when participants join late.
For meetings with more than a few participants, we recommend enabling Mute on Entry by default. Participants who wish to speak can use the raise hand feature to request the floor.
Self-Unmuting
By default, muted participants can unmute themselves by clicking their own microphone icon. This gives participants the flexibility to speak when needed.
If you want to prevent participants from unmuting themselves, you can use the lock settings to disable self-unmuting. This is useful for large lectures or exam situations where only the moderator should control who speaks.
When self-unmuting is disabled via lock settings, participants can only speak when a moderator explicitly unmutes them. Make sure to communicate this to your participants.