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):
- 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.)
- Once downloaded, open your Teams app, click on your profile picture in the top right corner of the screen.
- Select Settings and click on Devices.
- 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
- While in the meeting, click on the “More actions” button and select “Device settings”
- 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.
- Click to join the meeting.
- In the “Choose your audio and video setting” screen, click on the gear icon in the bottom right corner next to “Background filters”
- In Device settings under Camera, select your original Webcam
- 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.