Microsoft Teams just got a handy new feature in Windows 11

Microsoft has released a new preview of Windows 11 giving users the ability in the Teams meetings app to share content from other open apps on a desktop’s taskbar. 

The latest update from Microsoft in the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22499 for the Dev Channel makes it easier to share content without breaking the flow of a meeting via taskbar icons — the deck of open apps on the bottom of the screen in Windows 11. 

The new Teams feature on Windows 11 cuts the need to move back and forth between applications to share, and means fewer interruptions to members of a group meeting and to what they see during a call. 

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This Teams feature builds on the mute and unmute button in Teams in the taskbar. Microsoft released mute shortcut last week in a Dev Channel preview of Windows 11.  

The content sharing feature isn’t available to all Windows 11 users just yet, with the initial rollout targeting education and business users. But Microsoft says it will become available to all users over time. 

Microsoft said it will roll out the Teams app content sharing feature to a subset of Windows Insiders with Teams for work or school installed. It says it will “ramp it up over time”. 

“This means not everyone will see this right away with their Teams calls. We plan to bring this to Chat from Microsoft Teams (Microsoft Teams for home) later,” Microsoft says in a blogpost. 

To share content in Teams, users need to hover over the apps in the taskbar where a new button allows the user to share a window with others on a meeting. There’s an option to click a “stop sharing” button and another to “share this window”. 

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This should be useful for sharing Powerpoint slides to others on a meeting. And the feature will eventually not be exclusive to Teams. 

“Other communications applications can also add this capability to their applications,” Microsoft notes.