Now in public preview: Compact Chat

[Kaushal Mehta (LYNC)]

Description

Depending on your monitor size and viewing preferences, you might find yourself wanting to change the way your chat screen looks. Perhaps you want to optimize space and see more messages at a glance, or maybe you want to give more space between messages for a more relaxed view. In Teams, you can customize your chat view to suit your needs.

Flighting status

Available to everyone now

How to enable

1. From the top right of Teams, select Settings and more  ...  > Settings > General.
2. Under Chat density, select Compact.

You'll now see a view that displays more messages in your chats, and a wider box where you type messages. 

To reset your view to the other layout style please follow the above steps and select “Comfy”.

Supported clients and platforms

Windows 10	macOS	iOS	Android	Linux	Chrome	Firefox	Safari	Edge
X	X			X	X			X

Known issues

None

 

Known limitations

None

Enable your Teams client for the public preview 

1. First, IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on Show preview features. 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) 

Summary of public preview features

For a history of features in the Office and Teams public previews, see Release Notes Current Channel (Preview) - Office release notes | Microsoft Docs.

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 the your client.

Thank you,

Preview Team, @Jason_Schumacher 

Quality & Customer Obsession, Microsoft Teams

[#2]

Thanks, this is a really good direction! Can you consider indenting consecutive lines? Currently it is difficult to scan quickly.

[#3]

Thanks - appreciate this for private chats. I think most admins and users would be happy to see also the channels support this... could you please add some color on whether or when that will land?

[#4]

A good first step but still work to do. Among other things: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/dce690d7-cb94-ec11-a81b-000d3ae2cae1

[#5]

I just noticed that if I have the chat appearance set to compact, previews of the last message disappear from the chat list (until now, this setting did not affect the appearance of the chat list, only the chat itself). How do I keep a list of chats with message previews and have the chat itself in compact mode? Thanks.

[#6]

@Maciej2025 atm there doesn't seem to be a way as Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365 is the new default behavior. I'm trying to get my IT to raise this to MS ...

[#7]

@cliffst thanks for pointing this out, however, so far there is no "new chat density setting", but only not necessarily desirable merger with another existing option, used for something else

[#8]

One minor correction...the place to set or change this option isn't in Settings-General in the new Teams beta, it's in Settings-Appearance and accessibility.