Forum Discussion
Mac Teams Client - Main Teams window stops displaying after a few days
It's clear that the Teams client doesn't play nicely. A good solution to this is to use a lesser-known feature of macOS which is, instead of simply command-tabbing to the Teams icon and letting go of the keys, alt-tab to the icon and then press the cursor up arrow. This shows all the windows of the chosen application and you can use cursor left/right to select the "lost" window.
Nick Milner Alt-Tab is not a standard predefined shortcut on macOS (at least, I can't use it/find it). You can command-tab to the Teams app and then do Control-Down Arrow to view all its windows and select one. However, I have tried that in the past, and there simply is not window to select (in those cases where the Teams app decided to lose contact with the world).
I didn't say ALT-Tab, I said Command-Tab, and the suggestion was to Command-Tab to the Teams app and (while continuing to hold Command-Tab) press the up arrow to select a window. You might see "No available windows" but that just means none available on that display. Press up arrow again and you should highlight either a lost window on another display or an empty frame around nothing - selecting that usually brings Teams back to life. That's been my experience anyway. YMMV.
Nick Milner Thanks for the hint. I'll try it next time. I wasn't aware of the cursor-keys-during-cmd-tab functionality. It may save me the hassle of restarting Teams, although I don't consider it a solution.
The 'Frame round empty space' seems to me to be a pretty key thing here. It seems to always be there when cmd-tab-cursoring to Teams - clearly there's something the Teams app is doing to bring that into existence - I don't see it when cmd-tab-cursoring around other apps. Is this where it's getting stuck?
- This cursor/arrow suggestion does not work, it simply states "No windows available", the window is literally gone. If you cmd-tab to Teams and then click the Window menu item, all options are greyed out. I've noticed over the past two and a half years that we've been forced to use Teams instead of Slack that quite often when you attempt to cmd-tab to the applications, the window does not gain focus so I have to use four-finger swipe to get to the hosting desktop. Then, the second stage of this is the root of this thread, there is no actual window to give focus to and cmd-q, re-launch is your only recourse. Most, if not all MS apps don't obey or use the native macOS capabilities such as the window manager. I have hope that MS is evolving however, when they introduced macOS-native notifications in Teams last year my jaw dropped figuring a certain firery land down under (not Oz) had frozen over. Apple appears to be trying to move to more of an iOS-style walled garden and MS will have to get onboard eventually. Either that or Apple will roll over in an attempt to grab more of the business user market share, we know that Pages and Numbers aren't taking over anytime soon.
