How to: Push-to-Talk, Push-to-Mute and Toggle Mute in Microsoft Teams

January 20, 2025

Whether you like it or not, Microsoft Teams is a widely used product and many use it for online meetings. Despite being a big product from a big company, the customization options it offers with regards to voice communication are severely lacking.

The default in Teams is Open Mic with a global keybind for toggle mute, CTRL-SHIFT-M, which you can’t change. It also has temporary unmute (ie. Push-to-Talk) bound to CTRL-SPACE, but it only works when the window is active (and not while you’re typing in the chat box).

Furthermore, unless the part of the Teams window that shows the mute state of the mic is visible, there is no way to know what the state is without bringing the window to the front.

AutoPTT trivially solves all of these problems. You can use whatever keybinds you like, and they work regardless of which window is active.

ATTENTION: Keep the mic unmuted in Teams and let AutoPTT handle its state instead.

Always see state of the mic

Use AutoPTT’s Overlay to stay informed on the state of the mic. Check out the sections below to see what the Overlay looks like.

Push-to-Talk (even if Teams is in the background)

Active (Unmuted)

Inactive (Muted)

For Push-to-Talk, you’ll want to use AutoPTT’s Open Mic to PTT activation mode. Your mic is muted when the Push-to-Talk key is not pressed, and unmuted when it is.

Set the mode in the Audio section, and add a Push-to-Talk (or Secondary PTT) hotkey in the Hotkeys section – full setup steps.

Toggle Mute (even if Teams is in the background)

Unmuted

Muted

Use the Push-to-Talk activation mode, which keeps the mic unmuted by default, together with a Toggle Mute (Global) hotkey. How to: Toggle Mute has the full steps and alternative methods.

Push-to-Mute (even if Teams is in the background)