In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was looking for connection wherever they could find it. To connect with friends, maybe that meant playing a long-distance round of Among Us. To connect with family, perhaps you hopped on a group FaceTime. And to connect with coworkers, you used Microsoft Teams’ beloved Together mode for meetings.
. . . Oh, wait, you didn’t do that?
Launched in 2020, Together mode transformed virtual meetings within Teams. Rather than displaying a standard Zoom-style array of each attendee in their own box with their own background, Together used AI to cut out each person’s head and shoulders, then composited them next to each other to give the illusion of an in-person meeting.
Users could place their meeting attendees in a variety of settings, from a traditional conference room to an amphitheater or a coffee shop, or create custom scenes.
Though well-intentioned, the end result of Together mode was a meeting that looked, for lack of a better word, goofy. Cut-out busts are no substitute for in-person connection, and the attempt to recreate them in a visual space fell flat for many users.
Microsoft once sang the feature’s praises, saying it combats video meeting fatigue and lets conversations flow more naturally. But as announced in a recent blog post, Together mode is finally getting the chop from Microsoft, six years after the feature first launched.
Changing Teams for the better
In a post on the Microsoft 365 Insider Blog, Microsoft Teams project manager Katarina Tranker explained why Together mode will be gone as of June 30.
“We’re always working to make meetings easier to join, simpler to manage, and better for everyone, regardless of device or network conditions,” Tranker wrote. Axing Together mode, she continued, is meant to “simplify the meeting experience,” “reduce complexity behind the scenes,” and “focus our engineering investments on improvements that benefit every Teams meeting such as video quality, stability, and performance.”
Together mode did have some more practical features beyond its surface-level gimmick, including assigning seats within a meeting to help clarify team roles or intentionally mix up members from different departments. It also guaranteed that all meeting attendees would be visible on screen at once.
Microsoft is directing users to try its Gallery view for their meetings instead, which allows for up to 49 users to be visible on screen at once, while tools like pinning and spotlighting attendees can make up for the lack of assigned seating.
Though Microsoft is selling the end of Together mode as a win for Teams’ overall user experience, actual workers that use Teams aren’t so sure.
In the comments of an Engadget article about the announcement, users remarked that while they won’t miss the feature, they doubt its removal will make any meaningful improvement to Teams as a platform.
“In all the years I have used Teams at my last job, I think we only used this feature once,” one commenter wrote.
“Teams must be the most bloated and convoluted piece of software that Microsoft has ever pushed onto users,” commented another. “And that is kind of a miracle given that they also have two versions of Outlook, SharePoint, and Copilot in their portfolio.”
“You’re thinking that removing a menu item could make Teams faster and less complex?” a third commenter scoffed. “sure_jan.gif.”