There are a lot of ways to customize your video experience—and the video you share with others—when you join a Teams meeting or call. 

In this article

Turn your video on or off

Change your video background

Choose a video layout

Pin someone's video

Spotlight a video

Reframe a video

Turn your video on or off

Before a meeting

To turn on your video before a meeting, just select Camera  Camera off icon right before you join. 

Select camera icon to turn camera on

During a meeting

You might want to turn your video on and off over the course of a meeting—if you'd prefer people only see you while you're talking, for example. Go to the meeting controls anytime during the meeting and select Camera Video call button

Video off icon

Change your video background

If you want to change what appears behind you in your video, you can either blur your background, or replace it entirely with any image you want.

When you're setting up your audio and video before a meeting, select Background filters Background settings(just below the video image). You'll see your background options on the right. 

Note:  If you don't see the option to turn on background effects, the feature might not be available on your device yet.

For more details about customizing your background, see Change your background for a Teams meeting.

Choose a video layout

When you join a Teams meeting on the desktop or mobile app, you'll see the video streams of up to nine other people on your screen at the same time. This is the default Gallery view.

Meeting window showing 9 different video streams at once

Note: To provide the best possible audio and video quality, we might decrease the number of videos you're able to see at once if you're running a little low on bandwidth or computer memory.

You have several different video layouts to choose from, depending on the size of the meeting, where you join from, and the number of people you'd like to see on your screen at once.

2x2

If you're using Teams on the web (Edge or Chrome browser), you'll be able to see up to four video streams at a time. Join a Teams meeting on the Edge or Chrome browser and ask your participants to turn on their cameras to display a 2x2 grid of four participant videos at once.

Note: 2x2 video on Teams for web (Edge and Chrome) is available as part of the public preview program and may undergo further changes before being released publicly. To get access to this and other upcoming features, switch to the Teams public preview

On the Teams desktop or mobile app, select More options  More options button in the meeting controls, and pick from these layout options:

Gallery

The default view when you join a meeting on desktop or mobile. If there are more than nine others in attendance, Teams will prioritize the people who have their video turned on, as well as those that are speaking the most.

For people that haven't turned on their video, we'll show their profile pic instead (or their initials if they haven't added one).

Large gallery

Enables you to see the videos of up to 49 other people at once. This option is available when at least ten people have their cameras turned on. 

Large gallery view showing 49 videos at once

Note: If no one is sharing video, Large gallery won't be selectable in the menu.

When more than 49 participants join a Teams meetings, see them all in a gallery with pages. In Large gallery view, navigation controls < > appear at the bottom of the gallery when there are more than 49 participants. Use these navigation controls to view or engage with more participants.

Together mode

Lets you feel like you're in the same shared space with everyone in the meeting. Together mode is available when there are at least five people in the meeting. 

With Together mode, everyone's video appears in the same virtual space

If you're a meeting organizer or presenter, you have an assortment of scenes to choose from. To change the scene, click on the scene name in the bottom left corner of your screen. 

Under Choose a scene, pick the one you want and select Apply. The scene will change for everyone who's in Together mode. 

Note: The classroom scene automatically seats the meeting organizer (or whichever presenter was first to join) apart from the other participants. 

Focus

Available when content is being shared. This is the view to choose when you'd like to pay close attention to the content without the distraction of seeing people's video feeds.

Note: You'll need to turn on the new meeting experience to use Large gallery, Together mode, and Focus. 

Pin someone's video

To pin someone's video to your view regardless of who's talking, select More options More options button  in their video feed (next to their name) and choose Pin

Spotlight a video

Spotlighting a video is like pinning it for everyone in the meeting. If you're an organizer or a presenter, you can choose anyone's video (including your own) to be the main video people see. 

To spotlight someone else's video, right-click on the one you want and select Spotlight

To spotlight your own video, first select Show participants. Then, under Participants, right-click your name and select Spotlight. You can spotlight anyone else's video this way, as well. 

For more details, see Spotlight someone's video in a Teams meeting

Reframe a video

Teams crops some videos to make them fit your screen better. If you want a different view of a particular video—for example, if someone’s cropped out of the video or it only shows part of their face—select More options More options button  in their video feed, and then Fit to frame to see the entire video.

Select Fill frame to see a closer, cropped view.

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