Teams is KILLING my Mac Every Day

[shilocase]

I have a hard time believing I'm the first person to post this after not finding anything in the forum.  I wouldn't doubt if Microsoft is deleting them because they can't figure out how to fix this issue.  I can Google this issue and come up with numerous results but NOTHING has been able to fix this issue except for completely removing Teams all together, which unfortunately is not an option for me.

Teams is murdering my MacBook Pro 16" i9 with 16GB RAM every day.  This was supposed to be the most kick-a$$ laptop at the time but Microsoft is slowly killing it with Teams.  It causes serious lags and randomly decides when it wants to share the screen successfully.  Other times, it just shows screen but no audio or vice versa. It's infuriating and I've lost my patience!

For context, I just re-installed my entire OS thinking it was an OS issue. I erased the entire drive and started from scratch.  I did not do any kind of restore from backup.  Everything was a fresh install yesterday.

I joined a teams meeting today in front of 100 people and Teams seemed to be running fine until I went to share screen and then everything choked. Those who were showing video on the call started flickering rapidly, which could have caused an epileptic seizure - it's that bad and I'm not joking, this isn't funny. IT'S VERY IRRITATING! My entire system.  Mail, Calendar, Finder, and Preview (all Apple Apps, which should run super fast) started running like garbage with lags between 5 and 10 seconds - that's no joke.  Upon reboot, it was normal again until I ran Teams for another meeting... reboot.

I firmly believe Teams is a virus and the developers should be fired for ignoring this issue.  I've been dealing with this issue for nearly a year.  Teams always causes some kind of lag issue whenever I run it.  I have to reboot my machine to get my computer to work somewhat normal again.  This is ridiculous!

I found an MS article mentioning how Teams uses memory because of this Chromium feature due to easier development.  I don't care about the ease of development.  I CARE about it working and NOT DELAYING MY PRODUCTIVITY.   Forget Chromium!

Earlier this year, MS announced they were going to have a new and improved version in April 2021.  I think two version have been released since then - None of them have solved this issue.

Is anyone at Microsoft Listening?!?!?!

[#2]

@TechNichol I think I said earlier that I upgraded to an M1 MacBook air but I meant to post it was to a 13inch M1 MacBook Pro with 16gb ram. Also, I am running mainly Microsoft apps (excel, word, PowerPoint, todo) that are loaded from the Mac store, as well as onedrive. Teams is the Mac app version but downloaded from the Microsoft website (not available from the Mac store). Apart from teams and OneDrive, all these apps are optimised for the M1 native chip, OneDrive uses Rosetta (and works well). Posting this config in case it helps anyone resolve whatever is causing the Teams problem.

[#3]

Same issue here. I'm forced to use Teams as an Application in a Windows 10 Parallels VM.
We should have native versions working ok.

[#4]

Completely agree with you ! Microsoft needs to give more attention to this. I'm recommending my Organisation to switch from Teams to any other option (Slack for example, which works great on all platforms)

[#5]

I have the exact same problem as the og post creator of this thread. Whenever I am in a teams meeting my mac becomes completely useless. Please find a solution for this. Im using 2017 macbook air. I have tried everything to minimise the effect but nothing has worked so far. As soon as i leave the meeting everything works smoothly again. 

[#6]

Same issue with Teams eating up all resources while video chatting. Screen sharing doesn't work. MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018); 1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5; 8GB RAM; Intel UHD Graphics 617 1536 MB

[#7]

I have had to quit using Teams altogether. In the last six weeks I lost all ability to sync files (using with clients) and now even opening the application causes my CPU to grind to molasses. Please Microsoft Please, fix this nonsense.

[#8]

As a Windows 10/11 user, this is hurting me as well. Because some of my colleagues are using Macbooks where Teams is causing massive performance issues, we are using alternatives (zoom, google meet). This is a 60.000 user environment, with an A5 license, it's very disappointing we can't use the full MS stack because of this issue.

[#9]

I switched to the browser version of Teams because of this. Works like a charm.

[#10]

On browser version you cannot use multiple features as owner of the group, breakout rooms is just one example. Unfortunately untill Microsoft fixes it as far as I've researched nothing can be done.

[#11]

Same problem here... it's been MONTHS and insanely frustrating. I'm even running a corporate beta preview but it's almost like it's getting worse with every release.

Please fix this!

[#12]

Same issue and it's very problematic.
MacBook Pro mid 2014 with i7 and 16GB ram running macOS Big sur 11.6.1 and Teams version 1.4.00.29478.
When I connect both my dual monitors and share screen via Teams perform of the all apps fall overs and has huge lag/delay so much so often have to switch to zoom or other alternative.
Would be nice to get this sorted as high priority.

[#13]

Mid 2014 mac here. I only have the problem when I switch on my camera. Would it be possible to offer an option, so that I could lower the "camera quality" used when recording my video data (if that is even possible at all)? It feels like this is what causes the troubles for me.

[#14]

I have a 2020 Macbook pro  64GB RAM, i9 and gpu. Even with this high end configuration, team hangs and slows down my macbook tremendously. 

[#15]

Unsurprised to find this post. I've been paying for Office365 for two years and have avoided teams like the plague becuase it hammers my 2015 Macbook Pro (16GB RAM). Any TEAMS meeting stalls every other app, the UI has 30 second response times for things like unmute, the fan sounds like it's taking off, and the system regularly just freezes, restarting with the "your system restarted because of a problem message".

I wouldn't even be here if my client hadn't just begun insisting on Teams for project calls. I can't continue to work with this product unless microsoft seriously overhauls it. Am I going to have to but a Windows PC just to talk to my client? Is that why these issues have been left unfixed for two years now?

[#16]

@shilocase 

Hey everyone,

So sorry to see you all having the same issues I'm having.

It's still going berserk when using the app but have a few tips that might make you live a bit easier, especially for your macbook.

- don't turn on your camera, this seems to save quite some CPU usage. Preferred if everyone else keeps their cameras turned off as well.

- of course try to limit other processes, but as I work with online data I rely heavily on Chrome making that near impossible and the need to share screen often.

- What works best though. Use the web-app on Chrome. With this it seems that I can manage the best and even the fan sometimes doesn't make any noice at all. I think this is the case since it was built on a Chrome platform.
some cons with this approach though:
  Background noice isn't reduced/filtered anymore

  You're not able to use background filters for your camera, which is a nuisance since I work in my     makeshift office/closet

 When sharing screen, you're not able to also have your camera on (I wonder why... but don't mind so much)

I think it's less practical having it somewhere in a tab/window compared to just switching to a designated app

Have also tried this on Safari, for this you need to disable "prevent cross-site tracking" in privacy settings, otherwise it doesn't run. Funny enough, it does say on the page that downloading the app will provide a better experience, yeah right.

All in all, wouldn't recommend this as it seems to be just as bad using the app. At least Safari has the courtesy to notify me that the page is consuming a lot of energy and that closing this tab makes you Macbook more responsive, lol.

Cheers and hope an update will soon fix our troubles.

[#17]

@StefGramser024 It's a bit upsetting the only countermeasures so far include buying a 2K+ Mac book pro, turning off cameras etc. I guess MS wants everyone to work on Windows rather than Mac. Can it be more obvious...?

[#18]

@MacAttack1465 Not really, the Windows users forum have more or less the same amount of issues as us mac users.

I wanted to point out that turning off the camera completely defeats the purpose of using a video call client.

[#19]

@Sam Cosby  I am dealing with performance issues using my 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5 Mac Mini.

I am considering buying an external GPU to help with this.  If you had an idea if this would help, before I spend the $600+ that would be very much appreciated!  

Do you think an external GPU would help with teams meetings with many people's cameras running?

[#20]

@rickbunker buying an external GPU will most likely be a waste of money. I have macbook pro 16 with the top end Radeon Pro 5600M with 8GB of HBM2, and that is not enough. The teams app on Mac is just poorly optimised. 

Wait for the supposed overhaul of the Teams on Mac that's coming some time next year or use the webapp instead (that's what I do and then just put it into Large Preview mode where I can see all my colleagues). Or suffer the poor performance on Mac. Or switch to Windows...

[#21]

So you find that the webapp is better, and acceptable? Thank you for that insight. I'll give that a try. I also have an M1 macbook pro. I might see if I can get a KVM setup working so I can use the big monitor, keyboard etc. I have on my desktop setup with the laptop, and see if that is better.