Forum Discussion
MicrosoftNow in Public preview & Targeted release: Animated backgrounds in Teams meetings
The animated backgrounds feature in Teams meetings allows you to replace an existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment. It offers various options to enhance meeting experiences with creativity and personalization based on what you want. Currently, only pre-defined backgrounds from Microsoft are supported.
Flighting status
Available to everyone in Public Preview channel.
How to enable
Before a meeting starts, on the pre-join screen, select Effects and Avatars > Video effects and select a new animated background, identified by the small video icon in the bottom-left corner of the preview picture.
During a meeting, you can select an animated background by clicking More > Effects and Avatars > Select an background.
Note 1: If you need information about enabling the public preview itself, see “Enable the public preview for Teams” below.
Note 2: To be able to use this feature, user needs to be in Public Preview. Other meeting participants are not required to be in Public Preview.
Supported clients and platforms
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Windows |
macOS |
iOS |
Android |
Linux |
Google Chrome |
Firefox |
Safari |
Microsoft Edge |
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Yes |
Yes |
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Known issues
None
Known limitations
- Animated backgrounds are not available on low-end devices and require at least 8 GB RAM, CPU with 4 logical processors.
- Only pre-defined backgrounds from Microsoft are currently supported.
- Using video filters may slow down background animation, if your machine has a high workload.
Enable your Teams client for the public preview
- First, IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on Allow public preview. Learn how at Public preview in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs.
- Users then choose to join the public preview individually. Learn how at Get early access to new Teams features - Office Support (microsoft.com)
Send us your feedback
Got feedback on features in the public preview or other areas of Teams? Let us know straight from Teams via Help > Give feedback. This is on the bottom left of your client.
Thank you,
Preview Team
Quality & Customer Obsession, Microsoft Teams
Jan_Steberl
The new Teams came out and I cannot find where to upload my backgrounds. In the old version it was the folder:
C:\********\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads
But the new version does not see the uploaded ones.Can anyone tell me why?
Thanks!
- we used to do this too, however sharing custom backgrounds this way is now a Teams Premium feature. If you want to upload new backgrounds without Premium, you have to upload them individually now as you do if you're starting a meeting.
Or you apply a group policy or a management directive to copy some backgrounds into that folder
- Does anyone know if the usage of animated backgrounds increases bandwidth in comparison to static backgrounds?
Jan_Steberl 8GB RAM minimum!? Why? That’s a lot of for a simple feature like this. Snap Camera requires only 4GB of RAM. I’m very curious.
Teams itself has a hardware requirement of 4GB, so if the feature itself requires 4GB and does need Teams -> We have to sum it and we end with 8GB
- Hello Jan, do you know if a specific control to disable animated backgrounds will be provided? For admins. Thank you
- We asked this of our Account Manager last year and the answer came back no - we needed either a Communications license or a Teams Premium license to be able to customise what was available for users other than filters/avatars, which we could still switch off (for now!).
- Also wondering this same thing - can we disable these animated backgrounds?
