Rapid usage of Microsoft Teams increases the number of virtual meetings done from home.
Microsoft Teams backgrounds effects saving us from funny or not professional video calls.
Microsoft makes huge progress from the perspective of user experience during video calls done using Microsoft Teams. Thanks to additional effects like blur, custom background image or together mode You can work remotely from any place and don’t worry about what’s happening behind your back.
All these features are present for some time, but still many users have some problems with these functions. I gathered the most common questions about Microsoft Teams background effects on video and examples of interesting and funny background images for Teams calls.
If you have any problems with Teams video calls and background left your question in the comments.
What background effects offer Microsoft Teams
During the video calls done from home, you could have to do not display your background. Teams offer a few possible effects that could help you do virtual meetings better.
Basic background effects in Microsoft Teams available by design
- Blur effect – just a simple blur effect that cuts off your background and makes it less visible.
- Custom background image effect – this feature offers a safer scenario if you would like to cover your background not only blur it. Moreover, you can use different images, like a professional office space or a more funny one – Star Wars spaceship. You can add additional background manually ?
Advance background effects in Microsoft Teams
- Together mode effect – this is a new feature that simulates a video meeting on some kind of stadium when all participants are displayed at the same time. This option is available when there are at least 5 participants in the virtual meeting. You can display up to 49 users on the screen.
How to enable Together Mode in Microsoft Teams video calls
Together mode is not available by default. You will need to turn on a new meeting experience to get access to it.
1. Open the Teams Settings. You will find it on your profile icon
2. Then go to General settings and select Turn on new meeting experience. After saving the options you will need to restart the Teams application.
This option will deliver additional great features like a 7×7 display or video calls on a pop-up window.
How to set blur or custom image background effect as default
For quite a long time Teams does not offer the possibility to set background effect to be set by default when you joining the call. Thankfully this element has been improved. Now when you will set the background effect it will be remembered by Microsoft Teams app as the default setup for the next video meeting.
New pre-joining meeting experience in Microsoft Teams.
1. When you joining the call select a small icon with a background effect.
2. Thanks to that before you can decide about the setup of your background: you can left start view from your camera (1) without any additional effect, turn on blur (2) effect or select on available custom backgrounds (3).
Setuped by you background configuration will be set as default. Thanks to that you can set blur or custom background as the default behavior in Microsoft Teams.
What to do Microsoft Teams background effects not available
It could happen that background effects will not be available for You during working with Microsoft Teams.
There are a few situations when you cannot use background effects in Teams:
- using Microsoft Teams Web Application on https://teams.microsoft.com – Microsoft does not support yet these functionalities on the web app
- using a not supported mobile phone – background effects are available only on iOS 12 or later, compatible with the following devices: iPhone 7 or later, iPad 2018 (6th generation) or later, and the iPod touch 2019 (7th generation). Android devices do not yet support this feature
- using a computer with not supported hardware – it could happen that your computer processors do not support video effects. Your PC processor needs to include AVX2 instruction set.
The only way to make video background effects work is to switch to a supported version of the Microsoft Teams app with supported hardware on the used device.
How to customize Microsoft Teams background images
The great thing about background effects in Microsoft Teams is that you can customize background image with any pictures you want. You can push your company predefined background images to users’ computers or you can manually add funny background images.
☝ Remember that the background images on Teams are mirrored. You need to flipped them before you will upload them to teams. You can flip pictures here.
Recommended size of the background image is 1920×1080 in .png format. In the rest of the article, you can download coll background images.
Where are Microsoft Teams background images stored
Microsoft Teams stores background images locally on your device. just put the below-shared locations of the images in the file explorer. So to add custom images you need to save your picture in Uploads folder in appdata or library folder on your device.
- On Windows PC
Location of the images: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads
- On Mac
Location of pictures: ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams/Backgrounds/Uploads
- On iPad
It is not yet available. You can vote for this feature on UserVoice.
- On iPhone
It is not yet available. You can vote for this feature on UserVoice.
- On Android phone
It is not yet available. You can vote for this feature on UserVoice.
Upload manually custom background form Teams
You can manually upload a custom background image in the Background settings by choosing Add new button.
This will allow you to upload new pictures to Uploads folder.
Download Microsoft Teams background images
Conclusion
Microsoft Teams offers multiple background effects that could help to work remotely. Customize Microsoft Teams background effects for your meeting.
I do not have a “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads” folder
If you are on Windows 10 and have Microsoft Teams installed use RUN – Windows sign + R try to put this path there.
In case it will still not work you will need to drill down there manually: C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads
I get to here: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams and that is it. I do not have a Backgrounds folder listed and I searched the entire Roaming folder as well and nothing comes up. Do I need to manually create the Backgrounds\Uploads folders?