Now in Public preview & Targeted release: Animated backgrounds in Teams meetings

[Jan_Steberl]

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

Windows	macOS	iOS	Android	Linux	Google Chrome	Firefox	Safari	Microsoft Edge
Yes	Yes

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 

1. 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.  
2. 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

[#2]

Hello Jan, do you know if a specific control to disable animated backgrounds will be provided? For admins. Thank you

[#3]

Also wondering this same thing - can we disable these animated backgrounds?

[#4]

@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.

[#5]

@rico_roodenburg 

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

[#6]

Does anyone know if the usage of animated backgrounds increases bandwidth in comparison to static backgrounds?

[#7]

@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!

[#8]

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.

[#9]

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!).

[#10]

@W1lko 

Or you apply a group policy or a management directive to copy some backgrounds into that folder

[#11]

Microsoft told us again last week through the UK escalation path that this method isn't possible and will not work - and reiterated that the only way this can be done is 'via the Teams Premium features'.  Still ongoing.

[#12]

See https://www.workplaceascode.com/2020/04/17/distribute-custom-backgrounds-for-teams-via-intune/
or
https://janbakker.tech/manage-teams-custom-backgrounds-using-intune/

Answer from bingchat:

To distribute custom backgrounds for Teams via Intune, you can follow the steps below:

1. Open the Intune blade Device Configuration | scripts.
2. Add a new script by using the add button followed by Windows 10.
3. Give the name a logical name like Add-CustomBackgroundsForTeams.
4. Add the script from your local computer.
5. Select the option run script in 64 bits PowerShell Host (the script includes components who are not present in the 32-bits PowerShell host!).

The script is reusable in case the background(s) needs to be updated, and it is usable in a multi-us...1.

I hope that helps!

[#13]

@MatthiasRodler Hi, thank you for this, but this method is what we gave been doing, and no longer works for us in Teams 2.0. Are you able to do this via New Teams? We can add the backgrounds in the same way as ‘Classic’, but only users with a Premium license can see and select them.

[#14]

@W1lko 

You can copy the background to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams\Backgrounds\Uploads - Note: images need to be named as a GUID, so rather than the original filename (e.g., CompanyBackground.jpg and CompanyBackground_thumb.jpg they will be named like 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.jpg and 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000_thumb.jpg)

Best way to generate the GUID for the image name is to open PowerShell and type "New-Guid" and press enter - this will generate a new guid to use for each image. Copy all of the images over and exit the new teams client and then reopen - your custom background will now be available again without adding 1 at a time.

Have also been able to confirm adding of custom animated gifs also work in new teams as well by copying the gif into the directory, then copying the gif, rename the - copy.gif to _thumb.gif, then rename both with the GUID and change the file extension from .gif to .jpg then exit and reopen teams. I found that if i copied the animated image from the classic teams directory and renamed as a GUID the background was static, so the file needs to be copied as a .gif first.

Confirmed working with the following new Teams client without a Team premium license

[#15]

Thanks @SteveMacNZ - this is useful to know, but is this on a per user basis? We used to be able to do it via GPO meaning we could push it out to all users at the same time, that's what we're looking to achieve.

[#16]

with some PowerShell scripting yes you could push this out to a group of users, the following links have information on the scripting https://www.workplaceascode.com/2020/04/17/distribute-custom-backgrounds-for-teams-via-intune/ https://smbtothecloud.com/deploy-custom-backgrounds-to-new-teams-with-remediations/