Windows 11 is getting a Microsoft Teams ‘mute button’ in the Taskbar

Microsoft has added a mute and unmute button to the Windows 11 Taskbar, which gained a Teams Chat button in place of Windows 10’s Skype Meet Now button. 

The mute/unmute button should come in handy for workers on regular Teams meetings who use Windows PCs. It’s available for Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel in build 22494. 

Microsoft also notes in a blogpost that this build addresses “some impactful bugs”, but it also adds a a few known issues to its list of glitches. 

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Teams is now front and center at Microsoft in its push to create a collaboration platforms for hybrid work. Hence its addition of a Teams chat shortcut to Windows 11, while Skype is sidelined from Windows but remains maintained. 

“No more awkward or embarrassing moments when you forget to unmute or mute your microphone,” explains Windows Insider program manager, Brandon Le Blanc. 

“Starting with Microsoft Teams today, you’ll find a microphone icon automatically added to your taskbar when you’re actively in a call. You can see your call audio status, what app is accessing your microphone, and quickly mute and unmute your call at any time.”

Assuming the feature moves beyond testing, soon all Windows 11 users should see a microphone icon instantly appear in the Taskbar, which persists throughout a call even when many windows are open on a screen. The icon is coming to work and school users first, so it could be some time before all Windows 11 consumers see it. 

“We are beginning to roll this experience out to a subset of Windows Insiders with Microsoft Teams for work or school installed and 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,” says Le Blanc. 

“We plan to enable this feature for all Windows 11 customers in a future serving update,” he adds. 

Microsoft is also testing “snap groups” in ALT + TAB and Task View but it’s only available to some Insider testers and can be seen when mousing over open apps on the Taskbar. 

Prior to the Windows 11 official release on October 5, Microsoft had been working to fix persistent glitches in Taskbar and the Start menu in Windows 11.

In this build, tooltips shouldn’t appear in random places on the Taskbar after sliding your mouse over volume, battery, network, or other icons in the Taskbar corner. The new build also fixes an issue that was leading to duplication of some icons in the Taskbar corner.

There are also fixes for File Explorer, Search, and Input. A Search bug was causing the Windows indexer to excessively use memory and CPU when using the Outlook email client, for example. 

It also fixed an issue where Windows Hello facial recognition greyed out in Sign-in Settings in certain cases until closing and opening Settings. And there are fixes for designers who use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Lightroom Classic when in HDR mode. 

Users with with ARM64 PCs, such as the Surface Pro X, should notice fewer crashes in Teams in the last few Dev Channel builds.

SEE: Microsoft’s Windows 11: How to get it now (or later)

Microsoft, however, is still ironing out bugs in Start, Taskbar, Input, and Search, adding a few items to its known issues list based on user feedback. 

“In some cases, you might be unable to enter text when using Search from Start or the Taskbar. If you experience the issue, press WIN + R on the keyboard to launch the Run dialog box, then close it,” notes Le Blanc. 

Taskbar also has flickering issues and clipboard history on Windows 11 can appear as if it is empty after copying text. Microsoft is investigating the clipboard issue. 

Microsoft has imposed strict minimum hardware requirements on Windows 11, but last week it began ramping up availability to devices it deemed suitable for the upgrade.