'Goodbye Together mode, hello simplified meeting layouts': Microsoft Teams is finally ditching its virtual room views in a farewell to a proper relic of the lockdown days
Microsoft Teams is officially retiring its Together Mode feature, which was launched in 2020 to enhance virtual meetings during the pandemic. The company has decided to focus on other improvements that better meet users' needs as in-person meetings become more common. The modern Gallery view will now serve the purpose of displaying participants more effectively.
- ▪Together Mode was designed to create a virtual environment that made users feel like they were in the same room during meetings.
- ▪Microsoft is retiring Together Mode to simplify the meeting experience and reduce complexity.
- ▪The modern Gallery view can now display up to 49 participants, fulfilling the core need that Together Mode addressed.
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| Original publisher | TechRadar |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techradar.com/pro/goodbye-together-mode-hello-simplified-meeting-layouts-microsoft-teams-is-finally-ditching-its-virtual-room-views-in-a-farewell-to-a-proper-relic-of-the-lockdown-days |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 10:20:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T10:24:56.131Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T10:24:56.131Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | jpddXlLCW6aM |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Pro 'Goodbye Together mode, hello simplified meeting layouts': Microsoft Teams is finally ditching its virtual room views in a farewell to a proper relic of the lockdown days News By Mike Moore published 18 May 2026 Microsoft is retiring Teams Together Mode When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Microsoft) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Microsoft Teams Together Mode is being officially retiredLaunched in 2020 during the pandemic, it aimed to offer the feeling of "being in the room" with othersBut Microsoft says other features can now do the…
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