Teams app draining laptop battery in the background

Copper Contributor

New laptops, fresh Windows 10 Pro and Office apps install.

 

I noticed Teams app was at the top of the list of apps "affecting laptop's battery life" - with contribution as high as 40% when the app works "in the background". After switching to 'manual' permissions and reducing the amount of work the app can do in the background, the battery usage is still very high at above 30%.

 

Any advice on how to tame Teams app?

10 Replies
Interesting, I mean if your using Teams a lot it would make sense since that's how mine would be and maybe the background is reporting wrong? It does use a bit a CPU constantly it seems. If battery is of high concern might look into using web client? I know the Team is constantly working on battery and performance in the clients so I expect it to consistently improve over the coming months.

@Chris Webb , the thing is that I am only using Teams sporadically, and other than that, I just keep the app running - in case someone pings me a message, etc. (this will change in time, as my organisation gradually migrates from SFB to Teams).

 

I have an UPDATE too: went to Teams app's settings and unchecked "Open application in background". This has had an immediate positive effect, and Teams app is now much lower in the battery hoggers' ranking - dropping from 40%-ish to just 1%.

 

:)

Yeah but do you still get notifications in this case?

Good question :) After 'closing' the Teams app, it appears inactive on the taskbar, though remains in the Windows 'hidden icons' tray, showing 'Available' status.

 

2019-10-08_LI.jpg

@Piotr_JJ This isn't a permanent solution, but could you remove the app and just use the web interface?  Like I said, not the best solution, but maybe a temporary one.

@shawn_fielding - Did you find a better fix. Although i do not have the same issue, i am using a new Dell 5490 with Win 10 1809 and in Dark mode. 

@avi301983 Since my original post, I have made one change to Teams App settings, allowing the app to work in the background. However, in Windows 10 settings, I still block Windows from deciding what Teams App can do when working in background. App notifications arrive as they should.

@Piotr_JJ OK, i am going to try this out on one of the PCs and let you know if i see any improvement. One of my users reported a usage of 80% battery by Teams.

@Piotr_JJ I noticed that on my new MacBook Pro, if I have Teams open (not necessarily using it, just open and running) battery will die in 4 hours.  If Teams is closed, battery lasts 6 to 7 hours. 

I have even made a spreadsheet to track it to make sure it was not my impression. After 10 days of normal work, the conclusion is simple:

Teams reallyyyyyy drains battery.  

 

Hope they do something about it. 

Has anyone figured anything out with Teams? I literally bought a new MacAir thinking that it was my computer being old (4 years)  - and TEams STILL starts my fan 5 minutes into a meeting! I will need to ask my client to use a different medium if MicroSoft doesn't figure this out. I've disabled GPU, and I'm using web version. Any other ideas?@EduardoMaciel