Microsoft Will Finally Unify the Teams Clients on Windows and Mac

Though Microsoft has long offered a single Teams app on mobile that works with both commercial and consumer accounts, the situation is quite different on Windows and Mac. There, Microsoft has always offered two Teams clients, one for commercial customers and one for consumers. And that didn’t change, unbelievably, when the software giant launched the new Teams in March 2023.

Well, now it’s going to change.

Microsoft Teams will soon offer “a single desktop app for all user types,” a recent entry on the Microsoft 365 roadmap reads. “Microsoft Teams on Windows and Mac will support every type of Teams account (work, school or personal) in a single desktop application.”

Feature ID 383006, as this item is labeled, was added last week, on February 15, and it will begin rolling out in general availability in April.

Unfortunately, that’s all the information it provides. And so it’s unclear what will happen to the existing clients. Especially, the free version that has shipped in Windows 11 since 2020 and received a major update in version 23H2 last Fall. Speculating—because I must—I bet this means that the commercial client is being updated to support consumer accounts and that the Teams version in Windows 11 will remain Windows-only for now. But perhaps 24H2 will just include the unified client that Microsoft should have made in the first place.

Thanks to Jeff C. for the tip!