

Be warned though – this is a bit of a fiddly technique, and is entirely unsupported by Microsoft (and Practical 365). If you are confident navigating the file system, then you can use this technique to remove backgrounds. Whilst you can add backgrounds, the option to delete them is not available in Teams.

How to manage and remove unwanted uploaded backgrounds


The best resolution to use is 1920×1080 and the best format to use is PNG. You will be able to select a custom background, then select and preview your background from the uploaded backgrounds. From the background effects options, choose Add New: To change your background in a meeting, select the three dots in the middle of the control bar in the meeting, and then from the menu, choose Background Effects. Background Effects is still not available on phones. Microsoft have now relaxed this to include AVX, which includes devices like the Surface Go and older computers. Previously, you needed a modern CPU that supports AVX2. Microsoft recently expanded support for background effects to support more computers as of June 2020. If you couldn’t use the background blur feature on your computer previously, you may find background effects now works. To be able to set background effects you need to be using the desktop client on a PC or Mac. The latest version of this shipped in the first week of June and now includes an Add New button for upload of your own images, and controls for system administrators who need to limit its use. Microsoft Teams rolls out Background Effects.
