Since so many people have been working from home over the past few months, and we’ve relied so heavily on video meetings to keep in touch, the likes of Microsoft have been busy adding new functionality to their software – such as the ability to set custom backgrounds in Microsoft Teams.

I’m sure by now we’ve all seen the ability to blur your background for some added privacy when meeting over video call, and since the blur function was released Microsoft have added a number of backgrounds too. It works a little like a green screen and it actually works quite well. However, not many people realise there’s also a way to set custom backgrounds in Microsoft Teams using your own images. And it’s really easy!

*UPDATE* This is now a supported feature. Simply go to set a background as you usually would and choose the option to use your own!

Teams custom background in Windows

All you need to do is browse to the following folder and drop the images in here.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads

If you’re not sure how to do this it’s actually pretty easy. Just open up file explorer (your documents or “This PC) and copy and paste the above path into the address bar (shown below):

Alternatively, if the above doesn’t work due to restrictions on your computer, you could download this program here to do it for you.

Teams custom background in OSX

It’s a very similar process. Simply navigate to the following folder and drop your images in here.

~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams/Backgrounds

More info is available here on browsing directly to a particular folder if you’re unsure how to do this on your mac.

It’s as simple as that. Now all you need to do is decide what background you want! Checkout a few of my suggestions below!

Backgrounds for Teams Meetings

Below is a selection of my favourite backgrounds:

BBC News Interview Windows XP – Bliss White House Oval Office XWing Pilot