Recently, Microsoft announced that the ability to use a custom background when on a Teams video call. This was a nice upgrade from the background blur feature that allowed you to blur out the guest bed or your kids pouring a bowl of cereal in the background. But, the 24 options Microsoft has given us are simply not enough. We want to create our OWN custom backgrounds!
This feature is not officially available and not supported by Microsoft, but were able to enable it by following the simple steps outlined below.
Microsoft has announced that this feature will be released and supported in May of this year. Clients that are in the Government Community Cloud (GCC) may have to wait a while for this feature.
To upload your own background for use on a Microsoft Teams video call
Again, this feature is not supported by Microsoft.
Find an image
Choose a background. You can find some great images that are under 1 MB all over the web. Once you find an image you like, save it to your computer. We recommend that you then open the image in Microsoft Photos and resize to a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Save the image for use in Microsoft Teams
Open File Explorer and paste this location in the File Explorer Address Bar.
%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads
Drop your resized photos in the folder.
Choose your background and join your call
When you open Teams to participate in a video call, choose your background and have fun! Here are my favorites.
Just a word of advice, we have heard that a fellow partner added 15 photos and it crashed Teams. We didn’t test how many photos you can add but were able to load 3 without any issues.
We can help you with Microsoft Teams
Kiefer Consulting can help you in planning, deploying, and getting the most out of Microsoft Teams. Contact us to learn more about our Modern Workplace Consulting Practice that is helping clients improve how they communicate & collaborate.