How to disable Microsoft Teams meetings and channels popup and sound notifications?

Here’s a question we got from Dorothy:

Many thanks for the posts related to Microsoft Teams, those have been helpful to help me get started as my workplace transitions from Zoom and Skype to Microsoft Teams. Here’s a question of my own: i was recently added to multiple Teams channels and found myself receiving quite a bit desktop notifications from Microsoft Teams (some of them playing sounds). I receive alerts not only when someone sends a chat message but also in case that someone joins the channel and so forth. Any ideas on how i can turn off desktop messages in Teams or at least minimize the ongoing amount of notifications… Seems that nothing is helpful in making the Teams notifications go away.

Thanks Dorothy for your message. When joining a new collaboration platform, it’s helpful to balance between being up to date and staying productive and focused. In this quick tutorial we would like to help our readers to define their notification settings in Microsoft Teams, so they fit their preferences and help them stay productive. You might want to experiment with your Teams notifications as needed, as you can always revert back to the original alert settings.

Turning off Microsoft Teams pop-ups alerts

Here’s how to hide banner desktop alerts in Teams:

  • Open Microsoft Teams desktop or web client.
  • Hit your user icon, located in the right hands side of your upper Teams bar.
  • Then hit Manage Account to open your Teams Settings.
  • From the left hands side of your Settings dialog, select Notifications.
  • Then hit the Custom button.
  • Now go ahead and set your custom alert settings for Messages (incl Chat), people mentioning you in a personal / private chat or channels, information posted into your Teams feed
  • Note that for each setting you can typically choose from these options: Be notified by Banner and Email, by Banner only or not at all.
  • As an example, here are the settings i use to minimize pop up banner messaging from Teams:
  • Next, use the Edit button in the Meetings and People sections, to control meeting reminders alerts and follow other people appearance status (if needed).

Turn off Teams sounds

If you would like to disable sounds, the process is also straightforward:

  • Open the Team Settings dialog, by hitting your Teams icon and then Manage Account.
  • Hit Notifications.
  • Then in the Appearance and sound section, turn off the Pay sound for notifications slider.

If you are using an older Team version, the dialog looks a bit different; so you’ll need to disable sounds a bit differently:

  • In the Other section, set your notification sounds as shown below:
  • Select the Off option.

Stop Channel Notifications

In case you are a team/channel owner you are able to easily control the amount of notifications from the channel. This is specially useful in case you have a busy channel that is constantly broadcasting messages to its members.

  • In the Teams app, navigate to your specific channel.
  • Hit the More options to access the Channel Notifications.
  • Stop all messages by hitting the Off option.
  • Alternatively, use the Custom option to define your alert settings for new channel posts and replies and @mentions

Stop Teams email notifications

Readers asked how they are able to opt out email notifications regarding conversations they missed when they were away from Teams.

  • Hit your Teams Avatar.
  • Hit Manage Account.
  • The Team Settings dialog will open up.
  • Now go ahead and open the Notifications tab.
  • In the Email section, for the Missed activity email setting, select the Off option. Note that instead of turning off all emails from Team, you can opt to get a periodic summery at a predefined time frequency such as every hour, day etc’.
  • Close the Settings dialog.

Disable News notifications

If you are part of a large team or channel which keeps bothering you with banner popups on daily news digests or just break up news – you can politely mitigate the situation without leaving the Team.

Proceed as following:

  • Go to your Activity app in your left hand side menu.
  • Your Feed will open up.
  • and locate one of the annoying News alerts you might be getting.
  • Hit the ellipsis (…) icon.
  • Hit Channel Notifications.
  • Set the All new Posts drop-down to Off or Only Show in Feed. Note that this will suppress all new pop up notifications from the channel or just show them in your Feed.

Turning off messages when in a meeting

A couple of folks asked whether there is a possibility to hide notifications from Teams during certain periods, say during important meetings.

There is still no perfect solution for that, but a couple of workarounds,

Method 1:

A very much required setting is now available to suppress message previews. This is a powerful feature that works on the different clients you might be using (Desktop, ioS, Android etc’).

  • Hit your Teams avatar.
  • Then hit Manage Account.
  • Then select the Notifications tab.
  • Deactivate the Show message preview by sliding the button to the left (as shown above).

Method 2:

Set your status in Teams to Do Not Disturb, and that will suppress notifications that are not urgent or coming from your priority contacts.

You can set your status to DRD either by clicking your teams Avatar and then set the status; or simply by typing /drd in the upper panel search bar.

Turn off notifications on Android

  • Open the Microsoft Teams application on your Android phone.
  • Click on the Menu icon on the top left of the Teams application.
  • Click on Settings.
  • Select Notifications and hit the General activity button.
  • Here’s where you manage your notifications settings. For example, we have options to mute Calls, Chats, Meetings if required
  • If you do not require any notifications from Microsoft Teams, go ahead and turn off the Show Notifications slider.

In case of any question, feel free to leave us a comment. In the meantime, enjoy Teams 😉