Forum Discussion
Teams is KILLING my Mac Every Day
I have a hard time believing I'm the first person to post this after not finding anything in the forum. I wouldn't doubt if Microsoft is deleting them because they can't figure out how to fix this issue. I can Google this issue and come up with numerous results but NOTHING has been able to fix this issue except for completely removing Teams all together, which unfortunately is not an option for me.
Teams is murdering my MacBook Pro 16" i9 with 16GB RAM every day. This was supposed to be the most kick-a$$ laptop at the time but Microsoft is slowly killing it with Teams. It causes serious lags and randomly decides when it wants to share the screen successfully. Other times, it just shows screen but no audio or vice versa. It's infuriating and I've lost my patience!
For context, I just re-installed my entire OS thinking it was an OS issue. I erased the entire drive and started from scratch. I did not do any kind of restore from backup. Everything was a fresh install yesterday.
I joined a teams meeting today in front of 100 people and Teams seemed to be running fine until I went to share screen and then everything choked. Those who were showing video on the call started flickering rapidly, which could have caused an epileptic seizure - it's that bad and I'm not joking, this isn't funny. IT'S VERY IRRITATING! My entire system. Mail, Calendar, Finder, and Preview (all Apple Apps, which should run super fast) started running like garbage with lags between 5 and 10 seconds - that's no joke. Upon reboot, it was normal again until I ran Teams for another meeting... reboot.
I firmly believe Teams is a virus and the developers should be fired for ignoring this issue. I've been dealing with this issue for nearly a year. Teams always causes some kind of lag issue whenever I run it. I have to reboot my machine to get my computer to work somewhat normal again. This is ridiculous!
I found an MS article mentioning how Teams uses memory because of this Chromium feature due to easier development. I don't care about the ease of development. I CARE about it working and NOT DELAYING MY PRODUCTIVITY. Forget Chromium!
Earlier this year, MS announced they were going to have a new and improved version in April 2021. I think two version have been released since then - None of them have solved this issue.
Is anyone at Microsoft Listening?!?!?!
Hi everyone, we're pleased to announce Microsoft Teams for Apple Silicon, which on the M1/M2 ARM builds, will have significantly faster performance than what's seen during the Rosetta emulation today! Here's our official roadmap ID for this release; Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365. More on this can be found here; Announcing Microsoft Teams optimized for Apple silicon - Microsoft Tech Community.
Users should see a significant performance boost with this release. And for the Intel Macs out there, we're still thinking about you! We have some large performance fixes coming that will help improve overall performance for the Intel version as well.
Thanks,
Sam Cosby, Teams Engineering PM
242 Replies
Same here! Everytime I have a call it is a nightmare, whole computer freezes and difficult to use anything including the teams itself.
- 9618DG1m
Same here, seems to have become way worse since macOS Monterey.
MacBook Air i7 16GB
Seems like there's way more investment into getting new cool features in Teams instead of getting the program to work nicely and efficiently.
One bit of solace, from what I hear from Windows OS users in my company, Teams is also hogging the CPU and slowing things down, not as crazy as on a Mac though. This should hopefully push Microsoft into direction of solving it for everyone.
I need to agree with all that has been said in this thread. I'm on my second Mac and Teams (the desktop client) is just killing the whole Mac. When on the call (especially when screen sharing or having video turned on), the rest of the system is completely unusable. I usually spend 5-6hrs every day and calls and use other Teams features quite heavily (channels, files, polls) and I almost need to keep my computer physically restrained for it not to fly away ;). One solution that I've adopted is to move to web client of Teams. It works, not ideally but still much better than the desktop client.
Paszczi I can't believe that it is what two years and still Teams is an absolute nightmare. I work all day teaching coding, sdev and other related things remotely and is impossible to run VScode or any other IDE + Framework while running Teams.
It has become a running joke where we have to wait (Windows 95-style) for all to finally load and run
And this is not the worst. I have been reading that all Windows machines have the exact same problem. For MS to wish to have an "office-business default application that can compete with Zoom" and deliver this horrible UX is kind of like Windows 8 + IE in one package
shilocase I'm having the exact same issue while screen sharing with Teams and Slack. No issues with Zoom. This started happening a few weeks ago after Monterey upgrade. It starts after 1-2 minutes of screen sharing. It gives CPU Panic in the logs. Very annoying as I cannot to any screen sharing anymore.
- Fully agreed! I searched high and low. We use this for our group meetings and sometimes classes but my laptop overheats. I can HEAR the fans spinning a mile a minute especially if it’s flat on my desk things start sticking and having issues loading. My battery barely lasts when I’m on teams and plugging in AFTER teams is on leaves my laptop either discharging or at a standstill with the plug sign instead of the lightening bolt for charging
Teams is a solid app in terms of capabilities but the number it does on processing is ridiculous. Microsoft needs to do better.UWI_student_868 Teams has been running fine on my Macbook Pro 2016 16GB RAM for the past 6 months or so until today.
Yesterday I installed the MacOS Monterey update (v12.0.1) and Teams is now an absolute debacle. Video flickering, lag on everything. For half the day today I thought it was my video card dying. All the symptoms others have described. I use Notes during meetings and I get a 5-10 second cursor lag while typing if I'm on a Teams call. Ending the call (click "Leave", get no response, wait 15 seconds) restores all my other apps to their normal speeds. I am working 100% remotely to multiple cities and it is almost impossible to use.
Thank you for bringing this up. Just to keep this topic from disappearing I'd like to share my experiences with this since I switched from a whacky old windows PC with Windows 8 to a 5k iMac - 32GB / 4.2QC i7, Radeon 580 8GB on both Big Sur and now Monterey.
It was running perfect on that old PC and it's really blocking the iMac.
I must say though that it mostly shows in Teams itself. In a Meeting if want to unmute or mute myself i need to press that button about 10 seconds before i need the mic muted or unmuted. about 15 seconds if it's a screen sharing. Oh and don't forget the 10-15 seconds of complete freezing after finishing a call or a meeting.
Also: if there is a short teams call (no meeting) it's mostly even over before it can fully show up on the screen - and the call window will need 10-15 seconds do disappear after hanging up - which also results in a full freeze of the teams app.
That extreme lag/slowing down used to be a problem which also showed after a "teams notification" came up. That luckily could be solved by changing the style of the notifications from "MS Teams style" to "os style".
But: I can't believe how long microsoft has not been able to solve this issue. I have restarted, reinstalled, updates, etc. Teams and my Mac so many times it's just frustrating. Unfortunately - and that is probably why microsoft takes their time - i rely on it and have no way of switching to something else. Otherwise I'd have kicked this software off my mac so quick it would've not even realized it (because it's so slow..)
Just wanted to say that I look after a fleet of about 150 Macs. We use Teams all day every day. For those fortunate to have M1 Macs, I hear no grumbles. From nearly every intel user I have constant complaints from the fan being on all the time, to the Mac being completely unusable whilst using Teams and especially when on calls. Unfortunately for us we have had to upgrade quite a lot of people just so they can work. I was disappointed when an update earlier in the year promised performance increases but I haven't seen them.
I use my personal MacBook Air (2019, 1.6 GHz dual-core i5, 16 GB) in a Teams-heavy environment (office 365, etc). I am having MAJOR performance issues with the Teams client (especially sharing content while driving an external monitor). I'm looking at buying a MBP (14" 2021 M1 10/24 32GB/2TB) basically for the sole reason of unacceptable performance issues with MS Teams client. Based on your support experience, how confident should I be that the M1 MBP will overcome the (current) Teams client issues? Thanks for any advice you'd like to share. robbo215
- have same problem with my Mac air 2020 intel chip which keeps crashing in middle of presentations - just checking on this forum that its worth buying a Mac Pro with a non-intel chip?
Just wanted to confirm the observation by robbo215 that upgrading from a 2020 MacAir to a 2021 M1 MacBook Pro seems to solve Teams issues. I upgraded in desperation due to the unusable performance of the Mac Air whenever Teams was running especially when sharing and editing an Excel spreadsheet in large meetings. Since upgrading to the M1 (16GB memory) MacBook Pro, Teams has run smoothly even with multiple other app all running simultaneously. I note that all of the Microsoft Office suite that my company uses (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Onenote, ToDo, etc) is now optimised for the native M1 chip except Onedrive (which is promised to happen soon) and Teams (which no timeframe for M1 has yet been released).
Same here.
I am a frontend developer, node tools like "Jest", "Eslint" etc. have runtimes of sometimes over 10 minutes(!) instead of 60 seconds.
During a team call it is impossible for me to work.
MacBook Pro 16" with 32GB Ram - that's not allowed @Microsoft & Sam Cosby !I am massively disappointed by Microsoft. Not even an ETA for Teams 2.0 was communicated.
In Debug /Verbose mode I can watch the scripts running - it's hilarious.
- I’ve had the same peformsce occur on my MacBook Pro. I’ve seen other users posting about this for the past two years. Apparently the issue doesn’t exist on the new M1 chips, just the Intel ones.
Every other app works beautifully, but it’s been a disaster as during COVID almost exclusively work off teams and it clogs up resources across my entire laptop.Nrhill I can confirm that the same issue occurs on M1-based Macs. I have a new MacBook Air and today I timed it. It took 40 seconds from clicking the "Join" button in the Outlook invitation to get to the "intro" screen in Teams where you choose whether to show your video, etc. From there it took another 30 seconds to place me in to the call. Even then I could hear the participants but not see them. It took another 20 seconds for the video feeds to appear. A total of a minute and a half to join a call. Now that's frustrating.
Fortunately, there was no sharing of screens going on this call but when the call was over it took at least 30 seconds to close the window down after clicking "Leave".
As well as the extremely painful experience using the application, it also slows down other applications like another poster said.
I have to say that I'm pleased to have found this thread. I was beginning to think that it was a general problem with my shiny new MacBook but am pleased to discover it's actually Teams specifically.
- Using 1.4GHz Dual Core i5, iMac 21.5-Inch from Mid 2014. It is exceedingly unoptimized for MacOS and for my iMac to be able to function with teams in a way that is productive at all is impossible. It causes aggravation while I have a secondary monitor plugged in and it is absolutely killing my machine's productivity even when minimized. It is affecting co-worker image of Apple hardware despite the issue being a slow intel 1.4 processor with a very Chatty app on the Microsoft end, Please don't let people end up getting frustrated.. With ignorance around MacOS use in general things tend to get ugly pretty fast in the workplace. for years things like this have plagued cross platform software with the blame being cast across both Aisles.
Opening FS Usage, reveals when Teams is opened, Application "Microsoft Teams" HAMMERS my SSD, and File System with an obnoxious level of I/O requests, the saturation caused by excessive reads, and writes is just as saturating the the internal Bus as having a key being held down throughout your entire workflow somewhere on the keyboard... THIS IS LOOKING SIMILAR TO EARLY ADOBE CC ISSUES THAT CAUSED CRASHES, and EVEN GPU DAMAGE THAT EXACERBATED THERMAL ASPERITIES IN DRIVES AND DISRUPTED BGA VOIDS PRESENT IN GPUs. You guys have successfully built a bomb into your program for the MacOS Users to be angry about.
Please note: it's absolutely obvious to everyone that it is the 'Teams Client. Despite some systems poor attributes. I just Instammed an M2 Drive and if that is causing me trouble with one of those installed, then anyone with a mechanical drive is really dead in the water until Vast Optimizations are routed.
Devs be wary, this is a major issue because of the contention between apple and Microsoft over SW. Final Cut may or may not run smoothly on other systems but both companies have a duty to help each other look good when using respective software cross platform... As end users we are very fickle, we cant be just left to attribute this issue to platform hardware or have others outside the engineering departments put in their two sense.. This may divide Cross-platform OS end users due to lack of interest and cause a PR issue for Microsoft. But the diehards are just waiting for Microsoft to get along with Apple (Vice Versa) - Sam Cosby
Microsoft
Hi there shilocase - this is Sam Cosby from Microsoft Teams PM Engineering. I specifically look after performance for the desktop client E2E through feedback. I understand your frustration here, especially if you're having this issue during some of your important meetings. I can assure you that there's significant work going on from our side to review any and all performance related issues from both Mac/Windows/Web areas to ensure improvement. To dig further in your comment, I'll separate out your issues to help you further;
1. Powerful Mac device having issues with Teams: From what it sounds like in your verbatim below, this looks to be more/less affiliated with meetings in Teams. There are some significant improvements going into the current generation of the client, especially on the meetings side. Can you validate this is where you're seeing most of your performance issues on Teams for Mac? Are you seeing performance issues when outside of a meeting? I'd love to hear some additional examples you're seeing to ensure we have the right folks looking into this.
2. "Teams uses memory because of Chromium" - we're actually getting away from this in our next generation client, because we know there are some shortcomings due to this. The timeline is still aways away, but we're all in on this.
I promise we're listening - and we won't delete your message. We want to ensure that what we're delivering is top-grade, so hearing this makes us want to dig in further to give you the best experience possible. Looking forward to hearing back from you.Best,
Sam
- Sam
Thank you for attempting to help with this issue. I just started a new job in which MS Teams is the required remote meeting software. Teams is also killing my productivity.
It is really disappointing to see MS release a product knowing it has serious deficiencies. These deficiencies have real and negative impacts on peoples' professional lives.
I would encourage MS to move away from relying on its customers as a means to solve known issues and perform more product testing prior to releasing. Customers should not bear the costs of software deficiencies.
Mike - JohnSteckroth @samcosby
Issue has not been resolved completely. I am on an Intel Mac - with Teams open, the CPU fan keeps spinning, system starts exhibiting latency (even when I am not on a Teams call & not screen sharing). System performance improves the moment I close Teams. Is Microsoft still working on improving Teams performance for Intel Mac users?- Sam CosbyYes, there are many performance improvements in the pipeline for Intel Mac users as well that will also help, particularly in the meetings space.
- i am forced to move from mac to your fav windows just because of Team does't work well in mac.
is there anytime when team will work as smooth as it works on windows or you never want that 🙂- I feel sorry for you devendray, and I am on the same boat with you, It is just that Microsoft doesn't give a **bleep** about MacOS, this is really strange, I wonder if the Microsoft Development team and the management are literally smiling at this thread that they are quite successful in killing MacBooks with their slow poison - Microsoft Teams.
