Microsoft Claims Teams is Now Up To 60% Faster on Windows

Microsoft claims that it has optimized its Teams desktop app to boost performance during resource-intensive scenarios such as messaging, video calls, and meetings. These changes complement ongoing efforts to make the app more power-efficient during meetings.

The Teams desktop app has received several performance enhancements to improve the “overall interaction responsiveness time” since August 2021. Microsoft highlights that these updates are designed to ensure a smoother messaging, meeting, and calling experience for end-users.

The first big step in optimizing Microsoft Teams‘ performance was switching from Angular to React (a popular web front-end framework). The company has also upgraded the Electron framework and reduced re-rendering times as well as made incremental improvements to the source code.

“Our desktop, framework, and performance teams made several foundational improvements and our messaging and calling/meeting teams partnered to optimize the code for targeted user experiences we identified as important to the overall experience,” explained Mark Longton, Principal Group Program Manager for Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams improves latency and page load times for messaging

First up, Microsoft has significantly reduced latency and page load times to enhance the messaging experience in Teams. The software giant has improved the latency when scrolling a chat list by 11.4% and scrolling the channel list by 12.1%. Microsoft also claims that the compose message box now loads 63% faster.

According to Microsoft, the latest performance enhancements made switching to a channel and opening a chat window 25% quicker. Additionally, switching between chat threats jumped by 3.1%, and switching threads in the activity feed has become 17.4% faster.

Last but not least, Microsoft noted that the response time for toggling between the mute and unmute options in Teams calls improved by 16%. “Opening a calling/meeting window loaded 4.5% faster. Then once a user is in a meeting switching into a chat improved by 13%, switching to the activity feed improved by 18.7%, and switching to a channel improved by 20%,” Longton added.

Microsoft confirms new Teams 2.0 app for business is still in the works

Microsoft has been quietly working on a “Teams 2.0” app, which will be built on Edge Webview 2 instead of the current Electron framework. As of today, the new Microsoft Teams app powers the new build-in Teams consumer experience on Windows 11.

A Microsoft representative said in response to a comment that “there is a heavy resource allocation” involved in developing the business version of Teams 2.0, though there’s currently no ETA. Microsoft also confirmed that it’s planning to bring several updates to the Teams desktop app, including larger architecture improvements and more.