Before expressing your great dissatisfaction towards Microsoft Teams and its performance (causing your computer to hang or lag), please check whether your hardware meet the requirements for Teams, see Hardware requirements for Microsoft Teams.

And read these first:

1 Simple Clue that You Need to Know Which Windows You’re Using

If you are still using Windows 7, you need to read this!

If your hardware meets the Teams requirements, proceed with either of the following hacks (and its foreseen IMPACTS to your Microsoft Teams):

Fix-Hack #1: Update your Microsoft Teams desktop app

1. In Teams, click your display picture in Teams (top right).
2. Click Check for updates.
3. A prompt will appear for you to restart Teams to apply the new updates.

To check your app version:

• Click your display picture in Teams (top right) again.
• Click About.
• Click Version.
• (As of 7th December 2020) You should have Microsoft Teams Version 1.3.00.30866 (or later).

IMPACT: None. Yay! You get to enjoy the new features!

Fix-Hack #2: Configure the Teams settings

(Follow the image below)

1. In Teams, click your display picture in Teams (top right).
2. Click Settings
3. In Settings, in General tab, do either:

• Uncheck (or disable) Turn on new meeting experience (New meetings and calls will open in separate windows. Requires restarting Teams.); or
• Check (or enable) Disable GPU hardware acceleration; or
• Check (or enable) Turn off animations (requires restarting Teams).

4. Right-click your Teams in your taskbar → Click Quit → Restart Teams

Note: Your Teams runs in the background. You must close it from your system tray (near the clock, bottom-right).

IMPACTS:

Turn off the new Teams meeting experience (while you still can. Microsoft will eventually make it a permanent feature soon): You will not get to experience the new Teams meeting experience (Biggest thing you will probably notice is that any calls and meetings will pop out into their own window, separate from the main Teams window).

Disable GPU Hardware acceleration: You may notice that lines and shapes are not as crisp. Also, other user interface (look and feel) in Microsoft Teams will not be nice to look at).

Disable animations: You will notice animated emojis and GIFs will not move. Teams will not be as fun as it should.

Fix-Hack #3: Disable read receipts

1. In Teams, click your display picture in Teams (top right).
2. Click Settings.
3. In Settings, in Privacy tab, uncheck (or disable) Read receipts.
4. Right-click your Teams in your taskbar → Click Quit. [Follow Fix-Hack #2 — Step 4]
5. Restart Teams.

IMPACT: You will not be able to view who has read or seen your message.

IMPORTANT: This will only work for some people. No harm in trying!

Extra Note: If you cannot find this in your Teams Settings, your IT admin has disabled the ability for you to turn it off.

Fix-Hack #4: Clear Teams cache

[for Windows users only]

1. Quit your Microsoft Teams. [Follow Fix-Hack #2 — Step 4]
2. Cut and paste the following location into File Explorer: %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams
3. Then delete the following files:

• In Application Cache → Cache folder, delete all files in it.
• In Blob_storage folder, delete all files.
• In Cache folder, delete all files.
• In databases folder, delete all files.
• In GPUCache folder, delete all files.
• In IndexedDB folder, delete the .db file.
• In Local Storage folder, delete all files.
• In tmp folder, delete all files.

IMPACT: You may experience data loss. Better to backup or move the files to another place first.

Fix-Hack #5: Disable all Teams add-ins in Outlook

[Not recommended! Do at your OWN RISK!]

1. In your Outlook, click File → Options.
2. In the Outlook Options window, click Add-ins.
3. Next to Manage: COM Add-ins, click Go… (At the bottom).
4. Uncheck (or disable) Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in for Microsoft Office.
5. Click OK.
6. Restart your Outlook.

IMPACT: You will not be able to create Teams Meeting through your Outlook.

Fix-Hack #6: Switch to Team Web app

Open your Microsoft Teams via your browser

[Sign in here: teams.microsoft.com]

Recommended browsers: Google Chrome (1st), Microsoft Edge (2nd).

IMPACT: Some features will not be available for the web app, see Limits for Microsoft Teams Web app.

Fix-Hack #7: Close all other (unnecessary) apps running in the background

For your information, opening a lot of tabs in your browser (For example: 10 tabs and 2 YouTube videos [not playing]) will also consume about 1000+MB of memory.

IMPACT: You cannot work on too many things at once if your laptop has low memory (i.e., 4GB and below).

Fix-Hack #8: Upgrade your laptop memory (RAM) to more than 8GB

12GB works fine for me.

IMPACT: Cost to upgrade.

Hack #9: Uninstall and reinstall Microsoft Teams

Do like what you do for uninstalling applications.

Reinstall Teams (http://tiny.cc/Teamsapp).

IMPACT: None. Unlikely to have any effect on decreasing the high CPU and memory resources but will help with any other glitches that you are experiencing with Microsoft Teams.

There is no one 100%-surefire solution that will fix this.

It seems Microsoft has acknowledged this matter and is working on it based on the Microsoft Teams User Voice (Click here to vote).

If we learn more, we will update this article accordingly.

Originally published at mbrayz.wordpress.com