Appearance

Voice Chat ​

Talk to the people you're about to queue with, or the team you're playing with, without leaving the panel. There's no Discord server or third-party service to set up.

Where you can talk ​

  • Lobby voice: the voice row in a matchmaking lobby or party. Everyone who has accepted the lobby invite is in the channel.
  • Team voice: on the match page and in a draft lobby, scoped to your lineup. A channel is one team's and never spans both sides.

You're in one channel at a time. Joining a second asks first, then moves you.

Controls ​

Join, mute, and leave sit in the panel itself, with a status dot, a speaking indicator, and a count of how many people are talking out of how many are connected.

Each person in the call has their own Player volume fader, and Silence this player for you only mutes them for you alone; nobody else's call changes.

The Voice app ​

The call lives on in the Voice app on the hub dock after you leave the page you joined from, so you can browse the rest of 5Stack while you talk. The dock icon turns green while you're in a call and shows how many people are in it; with no call and nothing to join, it's greyed out.

  • In a call, the app shows everyone in the channel, and lists the other channels you could be in under Switch to. Switching moves you without hanging up first.
  • Not in a call, it lists Where you can talk: your party, and your team in a match you're playing, ready to join.
  • While you're in a call, a bar with your status, Mute and Leave call sits under every other app in the hub.

If the call is running in another browser tab, the app says so, and mute and leave still work from where you are.

Voice settings ​

The gear on every place you can join a channel (the Party app, the match panel, a draft room) opens the same settings each time. Pick your devices once and they apply to whatever channel you're in next. The same settings have their own page under Settings → Voice & Audio.

They also open before you join, so you can get your setup right while nobody can hear you.

What's in there:

  • Input and output device pickers, remembered across sessions. Unplug a remembered device and 5Stack falls back to the system default. You can change device mid-call without dropping out.
  • Mic Check: hear your own microphone the way everyone else hears it, including being cut off when your sensitivity is too high. Use headphones for this one.
  • Input level meter with your threshold drawn on it, and a test tone for the output device.
  • Input mode: Voice Activity with an adjustable sensitivity, or Always Transmit.
  • Noise suppression, which you can toggle without interrupting the call.

Settings → Voice & Audio ​

The settings page adds two things the gear doesn't:

  • Player Levels: everyone you've turned down or silenced, from every channel you've been in, with Reset for one and Reset all.
  • Reset to defaults puts the microphone, output, input mode, sensitivity and noise suppression back. Player levels are left alone.

Voice settings are saved on this device, not on your 5Stack account: every computer you play from keeps its own microphone, output, sensitivity and player levels. The microphone on your camera feed uses the same settings.

Video calls ​

Any voice channel can also carry a camera. It is always opt-in and off by default: joining a channel never turns your camera on. Turning a camera on or off doesn't interrupt anyone's audio.

  • You only see other people's cameras once yours is on. Opening the call and sitting there does not show you the room.
  • Tiles show everyone in the channel, with an avatar for anyone who has not turned a camera on.
  • Pop the video out into a floating always-on-top window, and keep it in view while you use the rest of the panel or watch a stream. The call keeps running as you pop in and out. The floating window needs a Chromium-based browser; elsewhere the grid stays in the panel.

Admin controls ​

Under Settings → Application → Cameras & Microphones:

  • Lobby Voice Chat: turn voice on or off instance-wide. It's on by default.
  • Video Calls: allow cameras in voice channels, on by default wherever voice is. This only decides whether the control is offered: players still turn their own camera on. Split into party lobbies and matches and draft rooms, so you can drop the match one if your players run tight on CPU.

Voice uses the same relay as player cameras and live streaming, so there's nothing extra to install.

Requirements ​

HTTPS is required. Browsers only allow a microphone over HTTPS; on plain HTTP the join button is disabled and says so. A blocked permission, a missing microphone, and a microphone already in use each show their own error.

Cameras additionally need permission for the camera itself, asked for only when you first turn one on.

A TURN relay is optional. Calls connect directly for most players. Add one only if some players can never connect, usually on mobile networks or networks that block UDP.

Discord still works

Voice chat is an alternative to hopping into a Discord call, not a replacement for the Discord bot: per-tournament voice channels, match creation, and role sync are unaffected.