Microsoft Teams’ animated backgrounds feature now in public preview

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft has announced that its video conferencing platform Teams' new animated background feature is now available to everyone on the public preview channel.

The animated backgrounds feature in Teams meetings allows users to replace an existing background with a dynamic animation for a more immersive virtual environment.

"It offers various options to enhance meeting experiences with creativity and personalisation based on what you want. Currently, only pre-defined backgrounds from Microsoft are supported," Microsoft said in a blogpost on Thursday.

Users must be members of the Teams Public Preview and use the Windows or macOS Teams client to use this feature.

To test the feature -- before a meeting starts, on the pre-join screen, select Effects and Avatars > Video effects and choose a new animated background, indicated by the small video icon in the bottom-left corner of the preview image.

During a meeting, you can choose an animated background by going to More > Effects and Avatars > Select a background.

However, there are some limitations that come with the feature.

The tech giant said that animated backgrounds are not available on low-end devices and require at least 8 GB RAM and a CPU with four logical processors.

Moreover, only pre-defined backgrounds from Microsoft are currently supported, and using video filters may slow down background animation if your machine has a high workload.