Summary

This article addresses the problem of Microsoft Teams running slowly without fully crashing or failing to open. These steps target the most common causes — bloated cache files, hardware acceleration conflicts, excessive background activity, and meeting-specific performance issues — and most fixes take under five minutes.

In this guide

• 1. Check Which Version of Teams You Are Running
• 2. Clear the Teams Cache
• 3. Disable GPU Hardware Acceleration
• 4. Reduce Meeting Resource Usage
• 5. Close Background Apps and Browser Tabs
• 6. Check Your Network Connection
• 7. Disable Animations and Reduce Visual Effects
• 8. Update Teams and Windows
• 9. Switch to New Teams (If Still on Classic Teams)
• 10. When to Contact IT

Before You Start

• A working internet connection with at least 5 Mbps download / 2 Mbps upload for meetings (verify at https://www.speedtest.net).
• Microsoft Teams desktop app — New Teams or Classic Teams for Windows.

Instructions

1. Check Which Version of Teams You Are Running

New Teams (released 2023–2024) and Classic Teams use different architectures. The troubleshooting steps differ slightly between them.

1. Open Teams and click the … (three dots) menu in the top-right corner, then click About > Version.
2. New Teams shows a version number starting with 24xxx or later, and the title bar or app icon may show "New" or have a slightly different appearance.
3. Classic Teams shows a version starting with 1.x and uses the older Electron-based architecture.
4. If you are on Classic Teams and have the option to switch, consider upgrading to New Teams (see Step 9). New Teams uses significantly less memory by design.

2. Clear the Teams Cache

Teams stores cached data locally to speed up loading. Over time, this cache can grow large and become corrupted, causing slowness instead of improving performance.

For New Teams:

1. Close Teams completely — right-click the Teams icon in the system tray (bottom-right) and select Quit.
2. Press Win + R, type %localappdata%\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams and press Enter.
3. Select all files and folders inside this directory and delete them.
4. Reopen Teams. It will rebuild the cache from scratch — this may take a minute on first load.

For Classic Teams:

1. Close Teams completely — right-click the Teams icon in the system tray and select Quit.
2. Press Win + R, type %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams and press Enter.
3. Delete the contents of the following folders (leave the folders themselves):
   • Cache
   • blob_storage
   • databases
   • GPUCache
   • IndexedDB
   • Local Storage
   • tmp
4. Reopen Teams and sign in.

3. Disable GPU Hardware Acceleration

Teams uses your graphics card to render its interface. On systems with older drivers, integrated graphics, or power-saving GPU modes, this can cause sluggish scrolling, delayed chat rendering, and choppy video.

For New Teams:

1. Click the … (three dots) menu in the top-right corner and select Settings.
2. Go to General (or Appearance and accessibility in newer versions).
3. Look for GPU hardware acceleration and toggle it off.
4. Restart Teams.

For Classic Teams:

1. Click the … (three dots) next to your profile picture and select Settings.

2. Go to General.

3. Check the box for Disable GPU hardware acceleration.

4. Restart Teams.

5. Test Teams for 10–15 minutes. If chat responsiveness and scrolling improve, leave acceleration disabled.

4. Reduce Meeting Resource Usage

Teams meetings — especially with many participants and video feeds — are the most resource-intensive Teams activity. These settings reduce the load without affecting meeting quality significantly.

1. During a meeting, click the … (more actions) menu in the meeting toolbar.
2. Select Settings > Meeting options (or find these in the meeting controls directly):
   • Turn off incoming video — If you do not need to see other participants' video, turning it off dramatically reduces CPU and bandwidth usage. Click the camera icon in the meeting toolbar and select Turn off incoming video.
   • Disable live captions if you are not using them — they require continuous speech-to-text processing.
3. Before joining resource-heavy meetings (large town halls, webinars), close unnecessary tabs in your browser and other demanding apps.
4. If you are presenting, close all applications you are not sharing. Teams captures and transmits your shared content — the fewer visual changes on screen, the lower the CPU load.

5. Close Background Apps and Browser Tabs

Teams shares system resources (CPU, RAM, network bandwidth) with everything else running on your computer. An overloaded system makes Teams slow.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager.
2. Click the CPU or Memory column header to sort by usage (highest first).
3. Look for apps consuming significant resources that you do not need right now:
   • Browsers with many open tabs (Chrome and Edge can use 100+ MB per tab).
   • Other communication apps (Slack, Zoom, Discord).
   • Media apps (Spotify, YouTube in background).
4. Close unnecessary apps by selecting them and clicking End task, or close browser tabs directly.
5. Aim to have at least 2 GB of free RAM available when using Teams for meetings.

6. Check Your Network Connection

Slow or unstable internet is one of the most common causes of choppy Teams meetings and delayed chat messages.

1. Open a browser and go to https://www.speedtest.net. Run a speed test.
2. Minimum requirements for Teams:
   • Chat and channels: 1 Mbps download / 1 Mbps upload.
   • Video calls (1:1): 2 Mbps download / 2 Mbps upload.
   • Group video meetings: 4 Mbps download / 2 Mbps upload.
3. If your speeds are below these thresholds:
   • Switch from Wi-Fi to a wired Ethernet connection if possible.
   • Move closer to your Wi-Fi router.
   • Disconnect other devices that may be consuming bandwidth (streaming video, large downloads).
   • If on VPN, disconnect from VPN temporarily to test whether VPN is the bottleneck (reconnect after testing if VPN is required for your work).

7. Disable Animations and Reduce Visual Effects

Animations and visual effects add polish but consume CPU cycles. On older or lower-powered hardware, disabling them makes Teams feel more responsive.

1. In Teams, go to Settings > Appearance and accessibility (New Teams) or Settings > General (Classic Teams).
2. Disable Animations if the option is available.
3. Additionally, reducing Windows visual effects helps:
   • Press the Start key, type Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows, and press Enter.
   • Select Adjust for best performance (disables all animations) or manually uncheck options like Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing and Show shadows under windows.
   • Click Apply > OK.

8. Update Teams and Windows

Performance bugs are frequently fixed in updates. Running an outdated version of Teams or Windows can cause known performance issues that have already been patched.

1. Update Teams:
   • Click the … (three dots) menu in the top-right corner.
   • Select Check for updates (Classic Teams) or About > Version (New Teams updates automatically via the Microsoft Store).
   • For New Teams: open the Microsoft Store app, click Library > Get updates to force an update check.
2. Update Windows:
   • Go to Settings > Windows Update and click Check for updates.
   • Install any available updates and restart if prompted.

9. Switch to New Teams (If Still on Classic Teams)

New Teams uses up to 50% less memory and launches 2x faster than Classic Teams, according to Microsoft. If you are still on Classic Teams and experiencing performance issues, switching is the single most impactful fix.

1. Open Classic Teams.
2. Look for the Try the new Teams toggle in the top-left corner of the app.
3. Toggle it on. Teams will switch to the new version. Your chats, channels, and settings carry over.
4. Test for a day. If you experience issues, you can toggle back to Classic Teams using the same switch.

10. When to Contact IT

Everything below sits outside Teams on your machine, so put the evidence in the ticket. Include the exact connection warning text, whether the slowness also happens in Teams on the web at https://teams.microsoft.com, and whether colleagues on the same network see it at the same time.

Contact your IT helpdesk if:

• Teams is slow for multiple colleagues on the same network simultaneously — this indicates a network infrastructure or server-side issue, not a local one.
• Meeting quality is consistently poor only when connecting to specific external contacts — there may be a federation or network routing issue.
• Teams shows connection warnings (Limited connectivity, Reconnecting...) that persist despite a stable internet connection — your organization's firewall or proxy may be interfering with Teams traffic.
• You cannot update Teams because the Microsoft Store or update mechanism is blocked by your organization's policies.
• Teams uses extreme CPU (80%+) even when idle and no meeting is active — this may indicate a corrupted installation that needs admin-level reinstallation.

Troubleshooting

TIP

Two fixes resolve the majority of Teams slowness issues: clearing the cache (Step 2) reclaims space and eliminates corrupted local data, and disabling GPU hardware acceleration (Step 3) fixes rendering-related lag. Try both before moving to other steps.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
Typing delay in chat — characters appear late	Bloated cache or GPU rendering issue	Clear cache (Step 2) and disable hardware acceleration (Step 3).
Slow channel and tab switching	Stale cache data	Clear cache (Step 2).
Choppy audio during meetings	Insufficient bandwidth or CPU overload	Check network (Step 6) and close background apps (Step 5).
Video freezes during calls	GPU acceleration conflict or bandwidth	Disable hardware acceleration (Step 3) and reduce incoming video (Step 4).
Teams uses 500 MB+ RAM	Classic Teams architecture or cache bloat	Switch to New Teams (Step 9) and clear cache (Step 2).
Notifications arrive late	System resource contention	Close background apps (Step 5) and clear cache (Step 2).
Slow startup — 15+ seconds to load	Outdated version or corrupted cache	Update Teams (Step 8) and clear cache (Step 2).
Entire system slows down when Teams is open	Insufficient hardware resources	Close other apps (Step 5), switch to New Teams (Step 9), reduce visual effects (Step 7).
Poor quality only on Wi-Fi, fine on Ethernet	Wi-Fi interference or bandwidth	Switch to Ethernet or move closer to router (Step 6).

Related Articles

• How to Fix Microsoft Teams Not Opening or Loading
• How to Fix Microsoft Teams Showing a Blank or White Screen
• How to Troubleshoot Teams Login and Sync Issues
• How to Fix Audio or Video Not Working in Microsoft Teams
• How to Fix Microsoft 365 Apps Running Slowly — Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams Performance
• How to Clear the Microsoft Teams Cache
• How to Troubleshoot Slow Internet or Network Performance (User-Level Steps)
• How to Fix Slow Performance on Windows 11

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