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Microsoft recently announced at its Windows 11 event on June 24 that it was working on a revamped Teams app that will deliver big performance improvements by ditching the Electron framework in favor of Edge Webview 2. The company said at the time. that its new “Teams 2.0” architecture would power the customer experience in Microsoft Teams as well as the new Teams customer experience built into Windows 11, with support for business accounts coming later.
Well, we managed to get our hands on this new Teams 2.0 app today, which is currently previewing but already looking very promising. The famous WalkingCat leaker share a link for the installer in May, but to our knowledge, the app wouldn’t allow anyone to sign in with their personal Microsoft account until very recently. Windows Insider MVP Florian B told us about the app earlier today and we’ve since been able to get it running on multiple Windows PCs without any issues.
New Webview2 / not electron teams alpha is now teams beta and seems to be letting everyone connect (was restricted to Microsoft internals before). Public beta probably incoming very soon. #Windowsinsiders pic.twitter.com/yUt4LKu67y
— Florian (@flobo09) July 14, 2021
The new Microsoft Teams Preview app doesn’t look all that different from the existing Teams Electron app, but it does feel a lot faster. The first thing you will notice is that you can now resize the application windows however you want, which the Electron application does not allow you to do. The app also supports native Windows 10 notifications, which the Electron app also supports, but only for work accounts.
The new Teams Preview app also features a streamlined section with different sections for autostart settings, notifications, appearance and accessibility, and privacy. In this final section, you can allow other people to be on Teams using your email address or phone number, and you can also sync your personal contacts to your mobile device, your Outlook account. .com or Skype.
Choosing to sync your contacts will make them all appear in the chat tab, but you can remove them from the app at any time. Microsoft is set to turn Teams into the next great chat app for consumers, and that’s why Windows 11 will also come with a built-in Teams app that we haven’t tried yet. The company has tried to do the same with Skype before and it hasn’t really worked, but maybe the fact that Microsoft Teams has over 145 million active users in the corporate world will change that.
It should be noted that at this time, this new Teams Preview app does not support audio and video calling. Buttons are missing in the chat window, and call buttons that appear when you hover your mouse over the profile picture of one of your contacts do nothing at this time. Keep in mind that the app is currently in preview and Microsoft has yet to officially announce its availability.
Overall this new client looks very promising, and the performance improvements brought by Edge Webview 2 are welcome. We can’t wait for this new Teams 2.0 architecture to add support for work accounts, as that’s pretty much where Microsoft Teams’ core user base remains. Either way, it’s good to know that Microsoft is rebuilding its Teams desktop app from the ground up, and this new preview app is certainly a good taste of things to come.
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