Teams Desktop App stuck at Loading.. during first run after install

The root cause is Teams initializing before it can write its own settings file on first run. It gets stuck waiting for a config it has not created yet. The fix that works: pre-create an empty settings.json file at the expected path before Teams launches for the first time.

%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\settings.json Create the file with empty JSON content: json{} For your deployment at scale, push this as part of your machine-wide installer sequence. Use a startup script or your deployment tool to write that file to the user profile before Teams ever runs.

On Intune-managed AAD joined devices you can deliver this via a PowerShell remediation script.

On AD joined machines, a Group Policy logon script handles it cleanly.

The second launch always works because Teams writes its own settings.json on exit, so the file exists by the time the user opens it again.

That is exactly what you are seeing. AVD environments with AAD join confirm the same behaviour, so this is not a hybrid-specific issue.

It is a first-run race condition Teams has not resolved across versions. What to check if the file pre-creation does not fully resolve it: Make sure the user profile path exists and is writable before the script runs.

On hybrid AAD join with roaming profiles or folder redirection, AppData\Roaming may not be available at the exact moment the logon script fires.