How to fix issues with Fortnite’s voice chat not working

If you aren’t using an external chat program or platform while playing Fortnite, you’re likely relying on the internal voice chat function while working to get some victory royales. 

Whether it be chatting with your friends as you drop together or trying to communicate with random teammates you get paired with, the voice chat is a key component for most Fortnite players. And that just makes any instances of the voice chat not working even worse. 

Because Epic Games hosts its own voice chat within Fortnite, it’s relatively easy to check for potential issues. There are certain troubleshooting methods specific to each platform the game is available on. 

Obviously, Epic can’t control the effectiveness of Discord or Xbox and PlayStation’s individual party chats. But if you’re having issues with Fortnite’s built-in voice chat, here’s how you can potentially fix those problems. 

Check the servers

The first thing you should always do with any Fortnite connection or voice chat problem is making sure the servers are still working properly. 

Epic suggests players check the community Trello board, which is updated by the Fortnite community team frequently when known issues are discovered or reported. This will show the status of any known issue and how close Epic is to getting things resolved. 

You can also simply check the server status page for all of Epic’s services. This will tell you if one specific element of Fortnite is down, including voice chat, matchmaking, and even the item shop. 

If something is listed as operational and you’re still having problems with it, you’ll probably need to implement another fix. 

Double-check your settings

Sometimes, the problem with your voice chat might just be a setting being changed without your knowledge. So if the game seems to be working fine, you might want to make sure your voice chat volume settings haven’t been updated. 

To check this, simply adjust your voice chat volume if it’s too low and make sure the audio output isn’t pumping your teammate’s voices to a source your speakers or headphones aren’t picking up (this will mostly apply to PC players).

You should also make sure that you’re in the proper audio channel, whether that be the Party or Game Channel. 

The Party Channel is used for players in the same party and won’t let you hear the voices of anyone who isn’t, even if they’re a teammate during a game. Meanwhile, the Game Channel connects players who are on the same team but in different parties, opening up the communication to everyone. 

As a side note, you can’t use Fortnite’s in-game voice chat if you’re using either Xbox or PlayStation party chat. So make sure you leave your console party chat if you want to make use of the main chats. 

Additional settings

When you’re in the audio settings, you should also make sure that you don’t have Push-to-Talk active if you’re suddenly having issues. 

Outside of that, you just need to ensure that your playback and input devices (your speakers and microphone) are correctly set and you should be good to go. Most of this can be done in the Voice Chat portion of the settings within Fortnite’s game client. 

If you need additional support for PC, Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch, you can visit the official Epic Games support website.