Ever felt like your Windows 11 taskbar is a bit cluttered? Part of it is because of the Chat button in the taskbar, which provides you with a “handy” shortcut to Microsoft Teams. Now, it’s being removed — and replaced with a less-invasive implementation of the app.
As of the latest Insider build, Microsoft is preparing to remove Chat from Windows 11. The current Chat experience, which is just Microsoft Teams integrated into the operating system, currently requires you to get into Settings if you actually want to remove it. Seeing how it wasn’t even good for business calls, which is the biggest use case for Teams, we’d imagine many were just ignoring its existence.
For Insiders, however, the Chat experience is set to be replaced with a more flexible, standard app for Microsoft Teams, which is also compatible with Windows 10. Teams will still be there, and it will still be bundled with Windows 11, but it’ll now be much easier to ignore if you don’t want to use it — and it will actually be useful if you want to use it for business purposes. Microsoft says it will also continue to improve the Teams app with new features and improvements down the road as well.
This improvement will land for everyone anytime within the next few weeks or months, so definitely keep an eye out for this.
Source: Microsoft
