Microsoft to Fully Revamp Teams With Major Upgrades Soon

Microsoft Teams 2.0 is coming soon, completely rebuilt and featuring performance improvements and other upgrades.

Internally known as Teams 2.1, it will be built from the ground up to improve its system resource usage and more. Sources familiar with the matter have revealed that the new version is being widely tested across the company with plans to roll out in March.

The software giant has reportedly been working on the new Teams client for years. The end result should be 50% less memory usage as well as reduced CPU stress which should significantly improve battery life on laptops. Some of this experience already came pre-installed for users on Windows 11, but businesses using Teams have been using older versions since it takes a lot of time to rebuild the whole client.

This version of Teams will move the app away from Electron in favor of Microsoft Edge’s modern Webview2 technology. The company will also move to a javascript library called React that will bring more UI improvements over the upcoming months.

Microsoft Team’s former head of engineering, Rish Tandon, highlighted the initial improvements coming to the app back in 2021. He said that the new architecture for Teams will be critical for future improvements.

This architecture will help us add support for multiple accounts, and work-life scenarios, release predictability and scale up for the client. It will be a journey but with Windows 11 we have taken key first steps.

Now that the improvements are ready to roll out soon, Teams should open faster and feel more responsive while you’re presenting in meetings or responding to messages. A preview of the new app is planned to release by the end of March, meaning a complete launch will take place later on.