This comes up often enough in Valorant that it deserves a straight answer rather than a thread to scroll through.

Short answer

In most cases the straightforward approach works. The exceptions are specific and listed below.

Testing this yourself takes a few minutes and settles it definitively. The accepted community answer is broadly right and wrong in a specific way that matters here. Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep.

What to do instead

The mechanic behind it is simpler than the discussion around it suggests. Most of the disagreement online comes from people describing different versions of Valorant. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. Nothing here depends on a setting you are unlikely to have.

Edge cases are genuinely rare, which is why the simple answer is usually the correct one. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. It is worth separating what the game does from what players have concluded it does.

Why it works this way

There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time.

  • Do not build a routine around an edge case.
  • Test it yourself where testing is cheap.
  • Read the whole sequence once before doing the first step.
  • Note the exception cases — they are specific rather than vague.

The practical answer

There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows.

Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about.

Worth knowing alongside this

Valorant is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over.

When the usual advice fails

Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. Everything below is framed around the current state of Valorant rather than a launch-week impression. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters.

Where people go wrong

  • Copying a setup wholesale from a streamer without understanding what each part does.
  • Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.
  • Assuming a guide from an older season still describes the current version.
  • Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.

Valorant FAQ

Does this change between platforms?

The behaviour does not. Where menu paths or prompts differ, that is noted above.

Why do other guides describe this differently?

Most were written for an earlier version and never revisited. Compare the steps against what your build actually shows.

What is the short answer?

It is the paragraph near the top. Everything after it exists for the cases where that paragraph does not quite fit.

Is there a faster method?

Sometimes, at the cost of reliability. Where that trade exists it is described rather than recommended blindly.

If you only take one thing from this: the answer near the top is the part that matters, the rest is context.