Microsoft Teams now prioritizes video participants within meetings

Source: Dan Thorp-Lancaster/Windows Central

Microsoft Teams will now make sure that you can see people with video more frequently within meetings. A new video-only meeting stage is available within Teams that prioritizes video-only participants. The feature has already been rolled out and should be available now.

Before this update, when you had a meeting with audio and video participants, Teams would show a mixture of participants within the grid. People without video would be shown as either a profile picture or their initials. People without actual video feeds took up quite a bit of room on the screen, so having a way to prioritize video participants makes sense.

If you have a meeting with more than nine participants, the ones with video are prioritized and shown within the grid, and those without video are grouped together below the video feeds.

The feature was spotted by Phil Worrell, an IT professional who shared a screenshot about it on Twitter (via OnMSFT).

The phrasing from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center says that “participants with audio are clubbed and shown below the videos.” In this case, “clubbed” refers to grouping them together.