Teams Introduces Animated Backgrounds for Meetings

[TonyRedmond]

Teams animated backgrounds add something to meetings. According to Microsoft, it’s “a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment.” Based on the limited set of background animated released by Microsoft (which currently can’t be augmented by custom backgrounds), the effect might not be quite what you expect. In any case, animated backgrounds will please some and disappoint others, which is what happens in a very large service spanning over 300 million active users.

https://office365itpros.com/2023/06/13/teams-animated-backgrounds/

[#2]

I know there's a bit of discussion around the performance issues and hardware dependencies of these fancy animated backgrounds, but there's no word from Microsoft about whether we can actually turn animated backgrounds off for end users. In the same way with the Snapchat filters, we deemed it unnecessary and unprofessional (distracting) and turned them off. Would be good if that was available for these animated backgrounds as well.

Does anyone have any more knowledge about this possibility?

[#3]

You can restrict users to just the default set of background images and blur through the meeting policy assigned to accounts. See https://office365itpros.com/2020/05/11/control-teams-background-effects/