how to hide the chat panel in teams?

Hello Eben,

I work with teams window size as small as it allows me. Previously when I do that with 80% zoom, chat would auto hide itself so it was all good.

One day, all of a sudden, chat wouldn't auto hide itself :(

I am not a programmer so I do not know how complex it would be to create an option for me to toggle on/off the chat auto hide but honestly, I do feel that this is quite a basic feature as "Mildly Annoyed" also posted below.

Anyhow, I hope the solution can be updated soon

There used to be a checkbox to to toggle hide chat list under general settings. I know because I checked it when setting up Teams. When I realized my chat list no longer auto-hid I literally went crazy trying to find the setting again. It's simply gone.

I'm not sure why it was removed, but it's crazy that a basic feature that previously worked perfectly fine, was just removed!?. while zooming in could be considered a "solution" to the actual hide chat list, it defeats the purpose because now Teams is still taking unnecessary space, just with Larger text.

I work in multiple different windows, and teams is literally just hogging space I do not have, since I cannot reduce the window size, because it wants to be large enough to have room for the chat list and chats.

Sorry for my rant. but Is there a way we can get Microsoft to hit the undo button and give us back the hide chat list toggle option.

Many Thanks

Hello feeling lost,

Good day,

After some research, testing from my end, and consulting it has been concluded that there isn’t a built-in feature to auto-hide the chat panel based on zoom level. So it is not currently feasible to hide the chat panel based on the zoom level.

However, here are a few tips that might help you manage the chat panel more effectively:

1. Hide Individual Chats: You can hide specific chats to reduce clutter. Right-click on the chat you want to hide and select Hide^1^. This won’t auto-hide the entire panel, but it can help keep things tidy.
2. Use Full-Screen Mode: Press Ctrl + Shift + F to toggle full-screen mode. This can give you more space to work with, although it won’t hide the chat panel entirely.
3. Adjust Layout: Try resizing the Teams window manually. Sometimes, adjusting the window size can help manage the layout better.

We apologize if we are not able to meet your requirements; however, thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will surely raise you concerns to our Product Team and hopefully this can be included in the future updates. 

In the meantime, please feel free to post this in our Feedback community by visiting Microsoft Teams · Community as it is a community monitored by our Product team to help improve user experience with teams, via feedback given by our valuable customers. They often update Teams based on user feedback, and your suggestion might be implemented in future updates.

If this feature is very important, the is a way to request it. You can raise a support ticket to request for design change in a new team. Our support online team will escalate to the product team for your request. You need to be Admin to raise a request design change, so you need to contact your admin or IT department for help. You can refer to this article to check the way how to raise a ticket. Ways to contact support for business products - Admin help.

For other concerns, please do not hesitate to add you post in the Microsoft Community Team. 

Thank you for choosing Microsoft as your partner in business. 

Sincerely   

Eben Ezer Tres | Microsoft Community Moderator

Dear feeling lost,
 
I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to provide you with an update regarding the issue you have reported to us.

We are trying to hide panel in new teams to check if it can auto hide itself and get back to you

I appreciate your patience and understanding during this investigation process. If you have additional information or details that may assist us in our investigation Please feel free to share with me. 
 
Thank you for your continued cooperation. I will get back to you shortly with more information.  Sincerely,Eben Ezer Tres | Microsoft Community Moderator