Microsoft Teams is finally putting an end to your potty mouth

shocked woman at laptop
(Image credit: Shutterstock.com / Shift Drive)

Telling your boss what you really think of them on a Microsoft Teams call could soon be a thing of the past after the company announced a new update aimed at censoring some of user's more unfortunate utterings.

The video conferencing platform is working on a new filtering control that will allow users to choose whether they see profanity or not in Microsoft Teams Live Captions.

The new addition will let users toggle profanity filtering on or off during a call, protecting them from any potentially foul language throughout, if they so choose.

Mind your language

In its entry in the official Microsoft 365 roadmap, the feature is described as "in development", with an estimated general availability date of May 2023, meaning sensitive users won't have too much longer to wait to block out profanity.

"With the newly introduced toggle for turn on/off profanity filtering, users will now be able to control whether they want to continue to leverage the profanity filtering capability provided out of box, or, if they want to see every word as-is," Microsoft noted in its description.

On release, the feature will only be available for Microsoft Teams users on Desktop and Mac devices, although it's likely that a further launch on other platforms may follow soon.

The update is the latest improvement to Microsoft Teams as the company looks to ensure its platform remains user-friendly.

The company opened up its live captions feature to all users in March 2022, having previously kept them for paying customers only.

The feature was then taken to a whole new level with the September 2022 launch of live translated captions. Available in a range of languages, Microsoft Teams users will be able to select live captions in the language of their choice, helping them gain better understanding with other participants.

It also recently launched so-called "intelligent translation" for Microsoft Teams Mobile users, meaning mobile users will be able to quickly translate messages in a foreign language, making sure there's never any delay or errors.

Mike Moore
Deputy Editor, TechRadar Pro

Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.