Forum Discussion
How to set Chat tab as default when starting teams
Good morning. I'm an IT contractor with M365 admin access at all of my clients who use it. I started using the new MS Teams because I am able to log into multiple accounts at once, but when I switch between clients they each default to different tabs. One defaults to chat, another defaults to teams which, for that client is a blank screen, and I wait for it to load then I realize I'm on the wrong tab (every single time, so annoying,....) I switched back to classic teams and I noticed that when I started Teams for these two clients they default to those same respective tabs when loading. This is better because I am able to load that other client once and switch to the chat tab and just keep it open, but new teams keeps loading the Teams Tab. I'm hoping that if I can change the default tab in classic Teams it'll change it in new Teams. Why are these two clients different and is there any way to change it?
Thanks!
14 Replies
SO!
I found a less-than-ideal fix for the desktop version of the app!- UNPIN the "Teams" TAB from the left sidebar.
- Click on the Chat tab on the sidebar.
- Close the Teams desktop app.
- Reopen the Teams desktop app, and, voila! it goes right to Chat tab/screen.
If you need to get back to the Teams screen, click on the 3 dots . . . in the sidebar and choose "Teams" from the list of apps in the menu that appears.
This might be too annoying of a process for you if you don't want the extra clicks to get to the Teams tab screen, but if we weren't used to some things being annoying, Microsoft would have already broken us and we would have sworn off all of their products long ago.TLDR:
- As long as you've unpinned the Teams tab from in the sidebar, AND
- you were on the Chat tab screen when you last closed the app,
- it appears that the Chat tab screen becomes the default screen when opening the app the next time.
Sorry that I'm not using the correct terminology, or if this is not what you're looking for.
Otherwise, enjoy this annoying solution for an annoying problem that MS should have solved years ago, with a simple solution from the back end. 🤷♀️
This is still a problem as of 8/7/2025. I was forced to use the new Teams and now it's opening in the Teams tab by default whenever I open Teams, even from when it's minimized in the taskbar. Extremely frustrating.
Got the same problem with the new teams. Searching brought up several articles saying that there should be an option under Settings->General to specify which tab to open on but that setting is missing now in both the new and the old teams. So it appears that Microsoft decided that they know better. Very unfortunate.
KirilOkun775 I poked around in the admin settings and there appears to be different profiles with different teams settings. I'm an admin but I'm not familiar with those settings so I don't quite know what they do. Plus I'm a contractor, so I don't have a say in the settings. I'm just leaving it alone for now and dealing with it.
- I'm also an admin. Where did you see those differences between different client's settings. Could you please point to the screens. Thank you.
- Switching to the old Teams just because of this
I was experiencing the same issue. I dragged the chat icon to the top of my list and the new teams now opens with chat as the defaultMatheusFonseca
kinslow11 I tried that several times, mine still starts on the Team app rather than the chat.
JECaine Teams defaults to either the last opened app or if it's a new login to the topmost app on the sidebar.
StevenC365 Thank you for the response. I set the problematic Teams to chat, closed and reopened it and it reopened in Chat, but new teams is still defaulting to the Teams "app" when I switch between clients
- Agree that this is annoying and searching for a fix. Chat is my top app on the left and Teams opens to the Teams app.
