There’s nothing more frustrating than spotting a flanking Phoenix pushing your team’s backline, only to fumble with your keyboard trying to warn your teammates before he gets a free triple kill. Most new Valorant players struggle with basic UI controls their first dozen matches, and even seasoned players can forget small quality of life features when they’re focused on climbing rank. Learning how to open chat in Valorant is one of the first core skills you should master, regardless of your playstyle or rank, to avoid costly miscommunications and make every match run smoother.
How to Open Chat in Valorant for Teammate and All Player Messaging
The first thing you need to know is that Valorant has two separate chat channels, each with its own default keybind, so you never have to worry about sending a trash talk message to your team by accident or leaking a strategic callout to the opposing side. These controls work the same across all game modes, from unrated and competitive to spike rush and deathmatch, so you only have to learn them once.
Default team chat bind: Enter key Tapping the Enter key at any point during a match or pre-game lobby will pull up the team chat text box, which only sends messages to players on your own team. This is the channel you’ll use 90% of the time, whether you’re calling out enemy positions, letting your team know you’re low on shields, or asking for a spike drop before the round starts. You can close the chat box without sending a message by hitting the Escape key, if you accidentally open it mid-fight.
Default all chat bind: Shift + Enter Holding Shift while tapping Enter will pull up the all chat box, which sends messages to every player in the lobby, both your team and the opposing side. It’s worth noting that Riot Games disabled all chat by default a few years back to cut down on in-game toxicity, so you’ll have to manually enable it in your settings before you can send or receive all chat messages. Most players use all chat to congratulate opponents on a good clutch, joke around during pre-round, or ask for a friendly 1v1 at the end of a match that’s already been decided.
If you don’t like the default binds, you can easily rebind both chat channels to any key you want in the settings menu. A lot of players choose to bind team chat to a key closer to their WASD movement keys, like the comma or period key, so they can open it faster without taking their hand off their movement controls. Just make sure you don’t bind it to a key you use for utility or weapon swaps, or you’ll end up opening chat mid-fight when you’re trying to throw a flashbang.
Adjusting Valorant Chat Settings to Fit Your Playstyle
Once you know the basic binds, it’s worth spending two minutes in the settings menu tweaking your chat settings to match how you play. The default settings work fine for casual players, but small adjustments can make a huge difference in how useful chat is for you, and cut down on the amount of toxic spam you have to sift through during matches.
You can find all chat related settings under the “Communication” tab in the main settings menu, and you can also adjust most of them mid-match by hitting Escape and opening the settings tab from the in-game menu. Here are the most useful settings to adjust first:
- Chat filter level: Set to mild, strict, or off to block slurs, toxic language, and spam from appearing in your chat feed. Strict mode blocks almost all offensive language, while mild mode lets more casual slang through. You can also add custom words to the filter if there are specific phrases you don’t want to see.
- All chat enable toggle: Turn this on if you want to send or receive messages from players on the opposing team. If you only care about communicating with your own team, you can leave it off entirely to avoid seeing toxic messages from angry opponents.
- Custom chat binds: Swap the default Enter or Shift+Enter binds to keys closer to your WASD movement keys for faster access. A lot of controller players also bind chat to a spare paddle on their controller, so they don’t have to take their thumbs off the analog sticks to type.
- Text-to-speech: Enable this to have chat messages read aloud to you so you don’t have to take your eyes off the site you’re holding. This is a great option for players who are focused on holding a tight angle, or who play competitively and can’t afford to look away from their screen for even a second.
Never leave your chat filter off if you’re playing public competitive matches unless you’re completely immune to toxic comments. It’s not uncommon for frustrated players to spam slurs, personal insults, or griefing threats in chat after they lose a round, and the filter blocks 99% of that content automatically. You can always turn it off if you’re playing in a private lobby with friends, where you don’t have to worry about random strangers sending you toxic messages.
You can also adjust the size and position of the chat box on your screen, if you find the default position blocks your view of part of the map. Most players move it to the bottom left corner of their screen, so it’s out of the way of their crosshair but still easy to glance at between rounds.
Fixing Common Valorant Chat Issues That Break Communication
Even if you have all your settings set up correctly, you’ll probably run into a chat issue at some point, especially after a new patch drops. Most of these issues are easy to fix in less than a minute, once you know what to look for, so you don’t have to sit through an entire match without being able to communicate with your team.
The most common issue players run into is chat not opening at all when they hit their bind. This almost always happens because a recent patch reset your custom keybinds, or you accidentally changed the bind when you were adjusting other settings. The first thing to do is open the settings menu and check that your chat binds are still set to the keys you want. I once spent three matches wondering why my chat wouldn’t open, only to realize I’d accidentally rebound it to my melee key when I was messing with my weapon swap binds the night before.
If your messages won’t send even when the chat box opens, you might have a temporary chat penalty from Riot Games. Riot automatically issues chat penalties to players who send toxic or offensive messages, and these penalties can last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on how many offenses you have. You’ll get a pop-up notification about the penalty when you log into the game, so if you don’t see that, the issue is probably something else.
If all chat isn’t working, double check that you’ve enabled it in both the general settings and the in-match escape menu because there are two separate toggles for all chat now. A lot of players enable it in the main settings, but forget to turn it on in the in-match menu, so they can’t send messages to the other team even when they want to. You can also disable all chat for individual matches if you’re dealing with a particularly toxic opposing team, without changing your default settings.
If your chat box is freezing or not showing new messages, the issue is almost always a conflicting third party overlay. Discord overlays, FPS counter tools, and screen recording software often mess with Valorant’s UI elements after a new patch, so try closing all background apps before you launch the game to see if that fixes the issue. If it still doesn’t work, verifying your game files through the Riot Client will usually fix any corrupted UI files that are causing the problem.
Best Practices for Using Valorant Chat to Win More Matches
Knowing how to open chat in Valorant is only half the battle: using it effectively is what will actually help you win more matches and climb rank faster. A lot of players either ignore chat entirely or spam it with useless messages, both of which hurt their team’s chances of winning.
Use team chat for strategic calls only, and save casual chat for pre-round or post-match lobbies so you don’t pull your teammates’ focus away from fights. Mid-round, only type short, essential information: enemy positions, remaining utility, spike plant time, or when you’re rotating to another site. You don’t need to type a paragraph about how you almost got a kill, or complain about your team missing shots, that just distracts everyone.
Avoid typing long messages mid-round because even a few seconds looking away from your screen can get you picked off by a roaming enemy. If you need to send a fast callout, use short, standard abbreviations that most Valorant players know: “Jett A long” instead of “There is a Jett player pushing the long path on A site”, “spike A” instead of “the spike has been planted on A site”, or “need heals” instead of “I am low on health and need a Sage to heal me”. These short messages take less than a second to type and read, so no one has to take their eyes off the game for long.
If you’re playing with random teammates, positive messages go a long way towards keeping team morale high. Even a quick “nice shot” after someone gets a kill, or “no worries” after someone misses a clutch, can make your team play better together, instead of tilting and arguing with each other after every lost round. You don’t have to be best friends with your random teammates, but being friendly will make every match more fun, and you’ll win more often too.
If you prefer to use voice chat for callouts, it’s still a good idea to keep text chat enabled as a backup. Your mic might cut out mid-match, or you might be playing in a space where you can’t talk aloud, so text chat gives you a way to communicate with your team without voice. A lot of players also type important information like spike timer counts in chat, even when they use voice chat, so players who have their voice volume turned down can still see it.
You don’t need to be a professional commentator to get value out of Valorant’s chat feature, but taking a minute to learn how to open chat in Valorant and adjust the settings to fit your needs will make every match feel less frustrating and more collaborative. Even if you use voice chat for almost all your communication, having text chat as a backup will save you from dozens of missed callouts and lost rounds over time. Next time you load into Valorant, take two minutes to test your chat binds, adjust your filter settings, and pick a custom bind that works for your playstyle, and you won’t have to fumble with your keyboard mid-fight ever again.
