Microsoft today announced the public preview of the new Microsoft Teams app for Windows. This new Teams preview app is built from the ground up focusing on performance, speed and intelligence. For example, this new Teams is 2X faster and consumes less memory than the current Teams app. Some performance stats:
- Launch app up to 2X faster
- Join meetings up to 2X faster
- Switch chats/channels up to 1.7X faster
- Consume up to 50% less memory
- Consume up to 70% less disk space
The existing Microsoft Teams app was built on Electron as the host, AngularJS as the web development framework, and a variety of custom controls constructed using HTML and CSS. The new Teams client uses Fluent UI collection of UX controls, transitioned from Angular to React for building UI, moved data processing out of the main thread to a client data layer worker, and finally moved away from Electron to WebView2 as the host. You can learn more the new Teams architecture here.
In addition to performance and design, Microsoft has also improved its authentication model, synchronization, and notification systems to provide a seamless and consistent experience. You can now easily switch across multiple tenants or accounts on Teams. Also, Copilot on Teams will be only supported on this new Teams client.
- Streamlined Actions: Less clutter simplifies notifications, search, messages, and channels
- Personalized experiences: Threaded conversations, customizable group chats, and interactive emojis give users more expressive collaboration
- Simplified meetings: Updates to the pre-join experience, gallery view, and screen sharing remove barriers to effective meetings
The new Teams client will be generally available later this year in 2023. Commercial customers on Windows to try the public preview from today. Microsoft will expand the preview to Mac users later this year.
