Skyrim - Disable Idle Follower Dialog

The various followers in Skyrim will frequent say things like "we've stopped, what is it?", "what did you need", etc. They speak these lines repetitively and will sometimes repeat the line within seconds. Since I started using multiple followers, it has gotten to be very nerve-grating.

Is there any way to disable the idle chatter?

Solution 1:

Follower Commentary Overhaul has got you covered. From the mod's FAQ:

Q) I keep an unsafe amount of followers in my house and it's a cacophony of madness!! How do I stop it

A) Don't fret, I've got you covered! FCO includes an MCM where you can adjust the frequency at which comments are made as well as which voicetypes are able to make them! 100% is the default frequency, and is balanced best for vanilla play or small groups of followers, but if you roll with a large following in combat or at home, you can slide it on all the way down to 10% frequency. If you only want particular voicetypes chiming in, or just can't stand one in particular, you can switch them on and off at will as well.

You can just set frequency of all comments to 0, which will effectively disable them.

Solution 2:

Follower Commentary Overhaul turned out to not work so well. I could turn down the frequency, but some of the lines made followers more annoying. And turning off the extra lines seemingly made the frequency have no effect.

However, I discovered that the Amazing Follower Tweaks mod (which I already had installed) has an option to simply disable the chatter for individual followers. The option that I need to turn off to disable idle dialog is Tweak Options -> Settings -> NPC allow idle chatter.