If you’re a little short on RAM, you likely know the pain of watching your memory fill up the moment you open more than two applications at once. Fortunately, Microsoft is planning to reduce how much RAM Teams eats, thus freeing things up so you can get more work done.
Microsoft’s Plans for Team’s RAM Usage
Unfortunately, we don’t have any big announcements or detailed roadmap plans to explain how Microsoft will achieve this feat. All we have for confirmation right now is a single Microsoft Teams UserVoice thread that the software giant has graced with its presence.
UserVoice is a forum-like system that Microsoft uses to gather feedback from its users. People can post what they want to see from Microsoft’s services, and people who agree with the post can vote it up. The more votes a suggestion has, the higher up the rankings it goes and the more likely Microsoft will consider the feature.
The feature suggestion in question was posted back on March 15, 2018. UserVoice member Daniel Gauthier expressed his disdain for how much RAM Teams was using.
Since then, users from around the world have supported his suggestion with votes and comments. Some of them compare Microsoft Teams to the infamous RAM-eater Google Chrome; the problem is, there are ways to free up Chrome’s RAM usage, while Microsoft Teams has no such freedom.
Fortunately, after a few years, Microsoft has finally granted everyone their wish. The software giant didn’t announce the feature, neither did they comment in the thread; instead, they have marked the feature as “Working On It,” meaning they’re now actively finding a solution.
We have no ETA on when the update will release, neither do we know how Microsoft will fix the problem. However, if you’ve noticed your PC comes to a noticeable crawl when Teams is open, rest assured that Microsoft is working on it.
The Problem That Prodded Microsoft Into Action
This feature likely came to Microsoft’s sudden attention due to the COVID-19 pandemic. People working and studying from home have been snapping up cheap laptops to do their work, which naturally comes with less RAM.
If Microsoft hopes to push Teams as one of the biggest remote work apps in the world, it needs to ensure that the software can run on low amounts of RAM. Otherwise, people may jump ship to Microsoft’s competitors; by the looks of the UserVoice comments section above, some already have.
Reducing RAM Usage to Boost Productivity
If your system breaks into a sweat every time you boot up Microsoft Teams, your woes may soon be over. We’ll have to keep an eye on Microsoft to see if it will give us a more solid release date.
Of course, you can also potentially solve the problem by grabbing more RAM. It’s not a suitable solution for some systems like laptops, but it can be quick and easy to fix if you can install more RAM sticks.
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