Microsoft Teams introduces an expanded gallery view to users, allowing them to take more actions

Microsoft 365 Insiders, good things are coming your way: Microsoft Teams has rolled out an expanded gallery view for the small meeting window to improve the experience for both speakers and listeners.

According to a blog post, Teams’ minimized meeting window shrinks to a small box at the top of the app, letting users monitor the meeting while they juggle other tasks. You can view more participant videos, spot any raised hands, and even catch a glimpse of your video.

If before, you could see who was talking in a single box, now, you can have an expanded Microsoft Teams gallery that shows up to four people, plus a box for you.

In the minimized view, users will need to click the view switcher and pick the “Show participant gallery” option. For presenters, the default is the extended gallery view, but you can change it to focus on just the active presenter if you need to.

This expanded view has many benefits. You can see more faces, handle participant actions like raised hands or reactions, and even mute any background noise without any trouble. Also, when you’re sharing your screen, the presenter window uses this expanded gallery view, which keeps the meeting lively and interesting.

This feature is available if you’re in the Teams Public Preview or Microsoft 365 Targeted release using the new Teams client for Windows or macOS.

IT admins can turn this on for users by adjusting the update policy to display preview features. If you’re in the Targeted release, your global admins can give access to specific people or the whole organization.

In other news, Microsoft Teams is now letting users move freely across breakout rooms, and the platform will finally allow them to personalize their notification sounds. It’s worth mentioning that the Redmond-based tech giant also recently introduced emoji customization, so now you can create your own emojis.