By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.
Microsoft is rolling out a new and improved version of its Microsoft Teams chat client today. It has been rebuilt from the ground up to make it faster and easier to use and has been in preview since March. After years of development, Windows and Mac users can now freely install the new version of Microsoft Teams.
The new version of Teams is up to two times faster while using 50 percent less memory, according to Microsoft. That’s good news to anyone who uses Teams already, which has been particularly resource-hungry on older laptops and PCs. Installing the new Microsoft Teams app should be three times faster and launching or joining meetings two times faster, with the app now taking up 70 percent less disk space.
All of these performance improvements are thanks to Microsoft ditching the Electron foundations of Teams and moving toward Microsoft’s Edge WebView2 technology. Microsoft has also moved to the React JavaScript library and focused on improving the Microsoft Teams design with the Fluent design language system for several UI improvements.
The new Teams has been in preview for months, but during that time, it was missing some features that Microsoft has now added to the final version. “We have made notable progress since the launch of new Teams in public preview,” says Microsoft product lead Anupam Pattnaik. “New Teams now has full feature parity for almost all features including custom line-of-business apps, third-party apps, breakout rooms, 7×7 video, call queues, PSTN calling, contextual search in chats and channels, cross-post a channel conversation, and more.”
New Microsoft Teams features will now be delivered exclusively on this new Teams client, so businesses will need to upgrade. There’s no migration required, though, so upgrading should be as simple as an update. Microsoft says “classic Teams” users will be automatically upgraded to new Teams in the coming months.
The new Teams client also wasn’t available initially for Mac users earlier this year in preview, but with the final release for macOS, there are also improvements for Apple’s devices. “We’re also seeing significant performance improvements on Mac, including the ability to switch between chats and channels faster, and access relevant information quickly and efficiently with a faster scrolling experience,” says Microsoft. “Teams works natively on all Mac devices, including those with Apple silicon, giving Mac users an improved app experience.”
This new Microsoft Teams client is also the foundation for the company’s AI-powered Copilot push in Teams. You’ll be able to use Copilot in Teams to summarize meetings, read action items, and avoid long threads of conversations to get to the key points.
Enterprise users of Microsoft Teams will now see a toggle to upgrade to the new Teams client, and it will become the default app in the monthly enterprise channel in December. You can get the new client by flipping the toggle in the upper-left corner of the existing Teams app. Microsoft has a full schedule for exactly how this rollout will affect different Microsoft 365 users right here.
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