How to Use Your Favorite Backgrounds and Filters in Microsoft Teams

How can you make meetings with your friends, family, and even co-workers more fun? Well, obviously, by slapping a filter on your Camera! Whether you want to become a cat for the day, or maybe even a potato, we’re here to help you add and successfully remove, the purrfect filter for your next Microsoft Teams meeting.

How to use built-in Teams backgrounds

Teams have several unique backgrounds that can seamlessly add fun or a professional look to your meetings, many of which you won’t even notice are backgrounds!

While in a meeting, click on the “More actions” button and select Apply Background effects.

From here, you can choose your favorite built-in background, or you can add a personal background by clicking the “+ Add new” button.

 

Using Third-Party Filters

Using integrations from a third-party, like Snap Camera, can give you even more fun filters to use! Here’s how you can integrate Snap Camera with Teams (these instructions may change depending on which third-party application you are using):

1. Choose the download for your operating system and make sure your Teams app is up to date. (Third-party software has third-party terms that you may have to agree to.)
2. Once downloaded, open your Teams app, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the screen.
3. Select Settings and click on Devices.
4. Under Camera, click the drop-down menu and select the third-party app as your camera.

 

 

 

Removing Filters and Backgrounds

Suppose you have an important meeting with your team, or you happen to be a lawyer in a virtual courtroom, it might be best to save the cat filter for another time. Here are a couple of different ways you can remove filters:

How to remove third-party filters while in a meeting

1. While in the meeting, click on the “More actions” button and select “Device settings”
2. Select your original webcam

How to remove third-party filters before a meeting

If your Teams app is up to date, you can check your settings before you enter any meeting to make sure your video is filter-free.

1. Click to join the meeting.
2. In the “Choose your audio and video setting” screen, click on the gear icon in the bottom right corner next to “Background filters”
3. In Device settings under Camera, select your original Webcam
4. If you haven’t already, this would also be the perfect time to change or remove your background!

 

Hopefully, these tips will save you from any cat-astrophic webcam difficulties in the future. Check out our other blog post on How to Run a Meeting Like a Pro in Microsoft Teams here.