Your own server

MumbleWay talks to any Mumble server. The server software is called Mumble Server (historically Murmur, and the binary is still often mumble-server or murmurd).

You need one of these:

A machine at home — a spare PC, a NAS or a Raspberry Pi is plenty. A Mumble server for a riding group uses almost no CPU and a few MB of RAM.
A cheap VPS — the smallest tier anywhere is more than enough, and it saves you opening a port at home.
A hosted Mumble server — several companies rent them by the month.

Port 64738, TCP and UDP. Mumble uses TCP for control and UDP for voice. If UDP is blocked it falls back to sending voice over TCP, which works and adds latency. Forward both.

Linux

The usual home for a Mumble server, and the least trouble.

Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mumble-server

# Sets the SuperUser password and enables the service at boot.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure mumble-server

Configuration lives in /etc/mumble-server.ini (older packages: /etc/murmur.ini). After editing:

sudo systemctl restart mumble-server
sudo systemctl status mumble-server

Fedora, RHEL

sudo dnf install mumble-server
sudo systemctl enable --now mumble-server
sudo mumble-server -supw YOUR_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD

Docker, anywhere

docker run -d --name mumble \
  -p 64738:64738 -p 64738:64738/udp \
  -v mumble-data:/data \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  mumblevoip/mumble-server:latest

Set the SuperUser password on first run:

docker exec -it mumble mumble-server -supw YOUR_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD

Windows

Download the server package from mumble.info/downloads — it is a separate download from the client.
Install it. The installer offers to run the server as a Windows service; accept if you want it up after a reboot.
Configure murmur.ini (or mumble-server.ini) beside the executable, or in %ProgramFiles%\Mumble\.
Set the SuperUser password from an Administrator prompt:

cd "C:\Program Files\Mumble"
.\mumble-server.exe -supw YOUR_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD

Allow it through the firewall — both protocols:

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Mumble TCP" -Direction Inbound `
  -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 64738 -Action Allow
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Mumble UDP" -Direction Inbound `
  -Protocol UDP -LocalPort 64738 -Action Allow

The executable has been named murmur.exe in older releases and mumble-server.exe in newer ones. Use whichever is in the folder.

macOS

Homebrew is the least painful route:

brew install mumble-server
brew services start mumble-server

Set the SuperUser password:

mumble-server -supw YOUR_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD

The configuration file is under Homebrew’s prefix — /opt/homebrew/etc/ on Apple Silicon, /usr/local/etc/ on Intel. brew info mumble-server prints the exact paths for your install.

A Mac at home makes a fine server for a group, but it has to stay awake: System Settings → Energy, and disable sleep.

Settings worth changing

In mumble-server.ini / murmur.ini:

Setting	Suggested	Why
`welcometext`	Your group’s name	Shown on connect.
`serverpassword`	Something, if the server is public-facing	The simplest access control there is.
`port`	`64738`	The registered default. Change it only if you must.
`users`	`20`	Cap it. There is no reason to leave it open-ended.
`bandwidth`	`72000`	Bits per second per user, generous for Opus. Lower it if your uplink is thin.
`registerName`	Your group’s name	The name of the root channel.
`registerUrl`, `registerHostname`	leave empty	Setting these lists your server in the public directory. Leave them blank to stay unlisted.
`allowping`	`false`	Stops strangers probing it for user counts.
`sslCert`, `sslKey`	Paths to a real certificate	Optional. Without it, clients see a self-signed certificate and pin it on first connect.

Connect from MumbleWay

Add another server in the app.
Address — your public IP, your dynamic-DNS name, or the VPS hostname.
Port — 64738 unless you changed it.
Username — anything; it is how you appear in the channel.
Password — the serverpassword if you set one.

Then share it with the group by opening the server’s QR code in the app and letting them scan it, which beats reading an IP address through a helmet.

Registering users. Connect once with the Mumble desktop client as SuperUser using the password you set, and register the riders. Mumble identifies people by their client certificate rather than a password, so a registered rider is recognised automatically from then on — which is why the app's Identity setting is worth keeping.

The add-server form: display name, address, port, username and an
optional password, with shortcuts to browse public servers, import
a file or scan a QR code. — Type it once, or scan the QR code the app makes.

The same form on iPhone, already filled in from a mumble:// link:
display name, address, port and username, with the add button
below. — Or follow a `mumble://` link, which fills the form in for you.

Administering it from the app

You do not need a desktop Mumble client to run the server day to day. Everything below is in MumbleWay, on the phone, with gloves on at a petrol station if it comes to that.

Each action is a request the server may refuse, so the app greys out what you may not do and reports a refusal in the server’s own words rather than pretending it worked.

A rider

The ⋯ beside somebody in the channel:

Entry	What it does
Mute on server (for everyone), Deafen on server	Silences them for the whole channel, not just for you. Needs Mute/Deafen on that channel.
Move to channel	Puts them somewhere else — the usual cure for somebody sitting in a channel that will not carry their voice.
Make priority speaker	Quietens everybody else while they talk. For a ride leader.
Register on this server	Gives them an account, so the server knows them by certificate next time and an access list can name them.
Kick from server…	Disconnects them, with an optional reason they are shown. They can come straight back.
Ban from server	Removes them and bars the address and the certificate, so a new connection does not get round it.
Information	What the server will say about them: client, system, address, certificate — and only to somebody allowed to ask.

The server

The ⋯ on the server card:

Registered users — everybody with an account, and Remove to take one away.
Banned users — the ban list, with Lift on each. A ban is either Until lifted or counts down.
Access tokens — the passwords that open token-gated channels. Held per server and sent when you connect.

A channel

The ⋯ on a channel row — and it is now drawn per channel, so a channel you may write to offers it and one you may not does not, wherever you happen to be standing:

New channel here, Rename, Remove channel.
Permissions — the access list, which is the part worth explaining.

Access lists

Permissions in … shows the channel’s rules in the order the server applies them, each one saying plainly that it grants or denies something, to a group or to one user, Here or And below.

Rules inherited from the parent channel are shown greyed and marked from the parent channel: they belong to the channel that defines them and are edited there. Turn off Also use the parent channel’s rules and they stop applying — and stop being shown, since a list of rules that no longer do anything is a list that misleads.

Groups are names a rule can grant rights to. Only riders with an account on this server can be in one, which is why Register on this server comes first in most of these jobs. A group can Take members from the channel above and can be left usable by the channels under it — Channels below may use this group.

Murmur rate-limits writes to an access list. Two in quick succession and the second is refused. The app re-reads on its own health tick rather than immediately after writing, so give it a moment before expecting the list to show what you just saved.

What riders see of your server’s text

Two of the settings above are read by every rider who connects, and MumbleWay draws both of them.

welcometext may contain HTML, and its links work. Write it with an anchor and a rider can tap it:

welcometext=Set push-to-talk — <a href="https://example.test/ptt">here is how, with pictures</a>

Only http, https and mailto become links. Anything else — javascript:, file:, even mumble: — stays ordinary text, because a welcome message is yours to write and a tap that added a server or a proxy from a sentence is not something a rider agreed to.

A channel’s description is shown too, under the channel a rider is standing in and under each channel they are listening to. Not under every row: a paragraph per channel would bury the list. Its links work the same way. This is the place to put what a channel is for — Mumble’s own client shows it when a channel is selected, so the text serves both.

Qt's editor writes a <style> block into every description it saves. MumbleWay drops it rather than drawing it, so a description written in the official client reads as prose here and not as a stylesheet.

A channel nobody may speak in is marked. Where your access list denies Speak, the row carries a struck-through microphone, so a rider sees it before moving there rather than after. Standing in one, they also get a notice on the server card saying the channel will not carry their voice and that moving is the cure — and their microphone button turns amber and stops being a switch, because it is not their silence to lift.

A server card on the phone: an amber notice saying this channel will not carry your voice and to move or ask whoever runs the server; below it the Root row with a struck-through microphone beside the user count, and under that the channel's description with one word rendered as a tappable link. — All three at once: the notice for a rider standing there, the mark on the row, and the description with its link.

Going further

This page covers only enough to get a group talking. Mumble has considerably more — ACLs and groups, channel permissions, Ice/gRPC administration, bots, positional audio, LDAP authentication:

Mumble documentation →
Server configuration, administration and the protocol itself, from the Mumble project.

mumble.info →
Downloads, community and news.