Computer

Tired of Teams? Make it completely disappear from Windows

Microsoft’s intention is to turn Teams into a kind of MSN Messenger, Skype, or, rather, native WhatsApp for Windows. Despite being a tool designed especially for work, its default presence in Windows 11 has not been very popular with users, especially those who use the PC on a personal level, outside of work environments.

Luckily, there are several ways to kill this messaging program in Windows. And we’re going to see them.

Before continuing, we want to indicate that the process is totally safe. At no time are we forcibly making changes to Windows that could cause us problems. Also, if we regret it in the future, we can reinstall this program directly from the Microsoft Store itself, both in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Hide Teams completely

This program is configured to appear in various parts of the operating system. The first, and most striking of all, is that we will see it anchored by default to the taskbar of the operating system. But not only will we find it there, but we will also see it in the system tray whenever we have it open. Actually, they are different programs. On the one hand, we have the Teams application for professionals (the alternative to Microsoft’s Slack), which is the one that appears in the system tray, while on the other hand we have the chat (the alternative to WhatsApp) that appears in the bar of tasks.

The first thing we are going to see is how to close it in the system tray. To do this, what we will do is show all the apps that we have open here, we will locate the Teams icon and, by right-clicking, we will select the “Quit” option.

Hide Teams icon in Windows 11 - 1

Ready. The program will no longer appear to us here.

next thing will be completely close the chat. This one is a bit different in that it doesn’t have a context menu like the previous one to close it. And we cannot unpin it from there as if it were any other icon, with the right button, since it does not have a context menu either.

Teams chat on Windows 11

To remove this icon from here, what we must do is open the Windows Settings menu (with the keyboard shortcut Windows + I), and go to the “Personalization > Taskbar«. There we will see a list with all the icons that we want to appear on this taskbar. What interests us is to uncheck the “Chat” box.

Hide Teams icon in Windows 11 - 2

We can automatically see how Teams has also disappeared from the Windows taskbar. However, it still loads automatically at Windows startup and is still installed.

Prevent it from booting at startup

Many programs, when we install them, are set to load automatically at login. In this way, as soon as we start, we can have it available and loaded in memory, avoiding having to wait to open it when we are going to use it. However, this implies a cost of RAM memory, CPU and other resources on the PC that, probably, we are not interested in assuming.

Teams, for example, is one of the programs set to start by default when you turn on your PC. And, if we do not plan to use Microsoft chat, we can deactivate it very easily. To do this, the first thing we will do is open the task manager with the keyboard shortcut Control + Shift + Esc, and go to the “Home” tab.

Here we will locate the “Microsoft Teams” entry. We right-click on it and choose the “Disable” option.

Disable Teams autostart in Windows 11 - 1

Teams will now not load at Windows startup, avoiding always having the messaging program open and loaded in memory.

In addition, we also need to make sure that this program has been properly disabled in the startup section of the Settings panel. To do this, we will open this panel (Win + I), and we will go to the “Applications> Start” section. We locate Microsoft Teams, and make sure it’s disabled as well.

Disable Teams autostart in Windows 11 - 2

Ready. We already have Teams hidden, and also disabled to prevent it from starting at system startup. But we can still go one step further.

Delete Teams completely

If we want to know absolutely nothing about this program, we will also be able to completely delete it from the PC. To do this, what we have to do is go to the Windows 11 Settings panel, and move them to the “Applications > Applications and features«.

Here we can see a list with all the programs and all the apps that we have installed on the system. We can search the list for Microsoft Teams, or use the search box to type in it and filter this program to get directly to it.

Once located, what we must do is click on the button with 3 points that appears on the right, and from there we will proceed to uninstall the Microsoft messaging program.

Uninstall MS Teams on Windows 11

In a few seconds, Teams will be completely deleted from our computer. Now we can restart the PC to verify that, indeed, there is no trace of it.

And what about Windows 10?

In Windows 10, Microsoft Teams is not part of the bloatware which is installed by default in the operating system. Therefore, unless we have installed it ourselves by hand, this program will not be part of the system. Moreover, even if we download the program from the Microsoft Store and install it, the chat function will not be available unless we install the new Windows 11.

In case of having downloaded and installed this program in Windows 10, what we must do is follow the same steps that we have seen in the previous sections. On the one hand, we can use the task manager to disable the automatic startup of the program, or open the Settings menu (Win + I) and go to the Applications> Applications and features section to uninstall the program from there.

In this way, Microsoft Teams will not have a presence within Windows 10 either.

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