How can I choose a background for Microsoft Teams

For meetings, I need to change the background to a particular image. I could not see the "Show background effects" feature in my ubuntu 18.04. How can we add a virtual background?

Solution 1:

The feature is currently absent for Linux systems. According to Change your background for a Teams meeting - Office Support:

• For now, Linux users aren't able to use this feature.

Solution 2:

As of January 2022, the Teams Background Effects (change/blur) works in Microsoft Edge for Linux. I have it running on Ubuntu 20.04.

Here's what it looks like (option highlighted in red):

Create Teams on Edge desktop file

You can also create .desktop file to open MS Edge with Teams. You can do this by:

1. Copy and rename existing Edge .desktop file from terminial: cp /usr/share/applications/microsoft-edge.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/microsoft-teams-edge.desktop
2. Edit the file: gedit ~/.local/share/applications/microsoft-teams-edge.desktop
3. Change Name entry at the top of the file and replace it with something like Name=Teams on Edge Microsoft
4. Find the Exec entry in the file and replace it with Exec=/usr/bin/microsoft-edge-stable --profile-directory="Default" https://teams.live.com/. If you use multiple MS Edge profiles, change "Default" in the above command to the profile you use for Teams (eg --profile-directory="Profile 1").
5. Optional: You can also set a unique icon so that Teams on Edge looks different to the default Edge icon. Here is the icon I created for this purpose.

Background

This functionality update is related to Microsoft Feature ID: 85738. It may also work in Chromium-based browsers like Chrome or Brave. Also see here for more info.