Teams Supports Custom Backgrounds

You can now change the background of your Teams meetings to a picture of your choice.

Vendor: Microsoft

Product: Microsoft Teams

Component: Meetings

Date: TBC

Target: Everyone

What has changed?

Back in 2018 Microsoft announced that users could blur their backgrounds to avoid any distractions during their meetings. While blurring the background was useful, it didn’t allow users to upload custom backgrounds.

Microsoft has now updated Teams to allow users to upload custom images to the app which can then be used as backgrounds. You can select whatever image you wish by sending it to Teams as long as it’s a certain file type (JPG, PNG or BMP.)

What do I need to do?

To change the background outside a meeting, follow the steps below:

• Open Microsoft Teams, and while you are setting up audio and video, toggle 'Background effects'

• You will now see a panel open up on the right side showing different backgrounds including the option to blur backgrounds

• If you want to use custom images, click on 'Add new' on the top of the panel and navigate to the image

• Once you have selected and added the image, scroll down to the bottom of the panel and you will see the image you just uploaded

• Click on the image and it will be set as the background

You can also change the background during the meeting by these few simple steps:

• During the meeting, click on the three dots (...) in the meeting controls and click on 'Show background effects'
• This will open up the same background effects panel on the right side of the screen
• You can either select an existing background or upload your own image using the 'Add new' option
• Once selected, click 'Apply' to save the new image as your background.

Additional advanced options

There is the option for IT Admins to be able to change and setup custom background features for the whole organisation. If you want to check this out the article is https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoftteams/meeting-policies-in-teams. You can also use this feature to prevent anyone from changing backgrounds if this is your company policy.