Microsoft is killing Chat integration in Windows 11: What this means for users

Microsoft is planning to make major changes to the Teams experience with the next major update of Windows 11. The company via a blog post has announced that it is planning to integrate the Microsoft Chat app and the Microsoft Teams apps into a single Teams app in Windows 11.

“Beginning to roll out with this build, Chat is now Microsoft Teams – Free,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

“Microsoft Teams – Free is pinned by default to the taskbar and can be unpinned like other apps on the taskbar,” the company added.

To recall, Microsoft introduced a separate Chat app in Windows 11 back in 2021. While rolling out the app to the Windows 11 users at the time, the company had said that the Chat app would enable Teams personal account users to connect with their family and friends over a video call or chat and that it would offer “the full Teams app experience for personal accounts”. At the time, the company had also clarified that the Chat app will be pinned to the Taskbar at Windows 11 startup. The idea at the time was to deepen Teams integration in Windows 11 and make the app available and more accessible throughout the interface of the operating system.

Despite the company’s best intentions, its Chat app has created more confusion for the users. Firstly, the availability of the free version of the Teams app, which is available for both personal and work accounts on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, makes the Chat app redundant. Secondly, the app is incredibly difficult to remove from the Taskbar as it requires the users to dig deep into the Settings menu. Lastly, since the Chat app is available only for personal accounts, Windows 11 users often end up downloading and using the more formal version of the app in the form of Teams while using their PCs for work. And for people using a particular Windows 11 PC just for work meant that the Chat app sat ideal all the time.

Microsoft sure realises the complexity of the situation and so it has decided to fold both the Chat app and the Teams app into a single ‘Microsoft Teams – Free’ app.

As far as availability is concerned, the change is available to Windows Insider users with the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23481. The company will roll out the change to all Windows 11 users when it is done ironing out the changes in the feature.

How will the change affect Windows 11 users?

With this change, Windows 11 users will be able to easily remove the Chat app from the Taskbar in their Windows 11 PCs. In addition to this, they will be able to use a single Microsoft Teams app for their personal use and their work-related conversations.

Interestingly, the update comes shortly after the company announced that it will stop supporting the Cortana app on Windows later this year.