During a meeting, you can raise your hand virtually to let people know you want to contribute without interrupting the conversation.

Raise your hand

In the meeting controls at the top of the screen, select Raise raise hand icon. Everyone in the meeting will see that your hand is raised.

Meeting presenters will also receive a notification that your hand is raised. In meetings where attendees can't unmute themselves, a presenter can allow you to unmute.

In addition to raising your hand, you can also choose from five live reactions to express yourself during a meeting.

See who has their hand raised

Select People  People or Show Participants button in the meeting controls at the top of the screen to see a list of everyone in the meeting. Anyone whose hand is raised will have a hand icon next to their name. If multiple people have their hands up, their names will be numbered to show, in order, who raised their hand earlier.

Image showing participants on the left of the screen with hand raise icons.

Lower your hand

Teams detects when you've spoken in the meeting, and a notification will inform you that your hand will automatically be lowered. Select Keep it raised if you still want to show your hand raised.

UI of automatic lowering of raised hand

If you haven't yet spoken but want to lower your hand, return to the meeting controls at the top of your meeting view and select Raise raise hand icon to put your hand down.

If Noise suppression is turned off (which happens by default when your device has high CPU usage), your hand will not automatically be lowered once you've spoken.

If you're a presenter or organizer of the meeting, you can lower everyone's hand at once:

  1. Select People  People or Show Participants button.

  2. Next to Participants, choose More options  More options button.

  3. Select Lower all hands.

lower all hands menu option

Want to learn more?

Meetings in Teams

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