Microsoft Teams is getting a major speed boost, you lucky things

Microsoft Teams
(Image credit: Shutterstock / monticello)

Using Microsoft Teams should soon be a much quicker and smoother experience for users everywhere thanks to some new speed-related updates.

The video conferencing service has announced a number of under-the-hood upgrades aimed at improving the user experience when navigating around the Microsoft Teams platform.

The company claims that these changes should contribute to a 30% speed increase when switching between Microsoft Teams chats or channels.

Microsoft Teams speed boost

Among the new changes are tweaks that make it much faster to switch between chat and channel threads within Microsoft Teams. This is due to an upgraded Microsoft Teams framework, which is now able to render HTML trees faster, run JavaScript and serialize arrays more efficiently.

Overall, the company says switching between chat threads is now 32% faster and switching between channels is 39% faster compared to two years ago.

Elsewhere, the framework upgrade has also shortened the join time for Microsoft Teams calls by 21%. Responsiveness during meetings has also improved, for those who felt their actions weren't getting across - for example, the latency of raising your hand has improved by 16%.

"Our goal is to improve performance with every Teams update for our customers," Microsoft's Jeff Chen wrote in a blog post announcing the upgrades.

"We continue to focus and invest in Microsoft Teams performance optimization, and we value the customer and partner feedback that helps us to prioritize the most critical scenarios."

The news is the latest in a series of upgrades to Microsoft Teams as the company looks to ensure the platform remains helpful and intuitive for users around the world.

For instance, the company recently added background effects to the web version of Microsoft Teams, meaning users will no longer have to download the desktop client or mobile app to gain access to this feature. The effects include the ability to blur the background and add custom wallpapers behind the speaker, which Microsoft says should make calls “more fun and personal.” 

The company also recently announced a "premium" Microsoft Teams will be on the way in 2023, offering optional premium add-on features that will make meetings more personalized, intelligent, and secure. 

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.