Compact mode
I really like Teams. I do. But the current chat layout is not suited for professional chats. It's way to space consuming. It looks like something imported from MSN with smiley's that take half of the screen. I would say that Slack have nailed it because they focused on the ability keeping a tight window with lots of chat text visible. In Teams the window is full and starts scrolling after like 10 sentences.

We are working on a design with more density in mind. Until this design is solidified we are putting this item back to Under Review.
1739 comments
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Dave commented
Teams compact mode has been worked on since March 2017 which is four years ago.
Provide clear concise statement if this is to be released in the next two years by end of 2022.
"we are working on it or thinking about it" is a dishonest shameful statement.
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Poal commented
Expect another "working on it" put users off comment in for Valentine's day 2021 so this issue is 'updated' its required 1 time a year.
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Anon commented
Please add this feature. Going from one chat to a team is like trying to walk across the Sahara. We need a compact mode function for high performing and power user teams.
P.s. This is one of your most requested features and it's been almost 4 years. Evidentially UserVoice is not a priority and is meant to be a trash can as other users have commented.
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FUD commented
BS. Microsoft is not working on this and the first "Working on it" comment from Microsoft is early 2017 - almost FOUR years ago.
Is UserVoice the default trash can support sends users so that they feel like they are having an impact on Teams.
Sound familiar:
Me: I have a problem using your software
Product Support: OK. What is it?
Me: It's ... and here is how to reproduce it ... and ...
Product Support: Have you searched our knowledge base and troubleshooting guide
Me: Yes. And sites A, B and C
Product Support: Have you entered a support ticket?
Me: Yes. It is ticket number X
Product Support: OK. I've pulled up the ticket. It looks like this feature is not in our product.
Me: It should be fixed, it is a bug.
Product Support: OK. I'll mark it as an enhancement request
Me: It's a bug
Product Support: Thank you. Please add any detail to the enhancement request if you have any.
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Johan Wikström commented
Please prioritize this. Slack is so much better chat experience..
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Anonymous commented
compact view that makes it possible to have a chat conversation running along with you workning in another windows, that´s not even a nice to have thing. It´s a need to have thing if this tool should be accepted with happyness by my employees.
As it is now, it just makes users frustrated, and they start working with parallell solutions.
And I also look for simple filters of contacts, like the old one in skype where it was easy to filter by online status.
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Debbie commented
Totally agree with Phil O - I'd also like to see a relatively thin window that I can "stick" on the right side of my screen like I did with Skype for Business. Just too big and clunky as is....
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Phil Oxenberg commented
I'd like to see a relatively thin window that I can "stick" on the right side of my screen like I did with Skype for Business. I'd like to have the same viewing options as I had with SfB also. Thanks
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Chris M commented
This should be your #1 item on your to-do list, MS. Nothing matters more than usability.
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Tyler Vice commented
This is HUGE for my company accepting this as a replacement for spark. People will be upset about how difficult it is to see a list of the entire company with how available they are and the ability to double click and get going from a very tiny window.
It blows my mind that no one thought to implement the ability to fuse several chats into the pop-out window and change between them. Teams didn't bother to consider known-working, decades-old interface technology that people have grown to love. I know its not just a chat product, but that is no excuse for chat interface failing this miserably. I see references in the comments to ICQ--AIM, Spark, ICQ, they all made sense for chat efficiency. I don't understand why its so hard to deliver a common sense product. I am so sick of Microsoft making the assumption that just because they're coming up with something new, they aren't allowed to keep what works and whats loved. Add me to the list of people considering slack if this isn't prioritized/implemented soon.
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Anonymous commented
Microsoft investing in video technology is forgetting that Slack is way ahead of the Teams in terms of UI/UX. I really consider moving from Teams just because of their very poor performance in UI/UX. How can this be 4-year-old thread with thousands of programmers & designers working in Microsoft?
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Anonymous Tech commented
ugh, the look and feel is awful ... at least there should be available look and feel plugins to bridge the gap until Microsoft wakes up and make TEAMS a feature rich product rather a "Let's get the product out the door and fix it later" product ... which has been a few years going now.
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Anonymous commented
Monitors are usually wider than they are tall, so placing the person's name, timestamp and reply button to the side of their sentence would make this more compact. You may not even need the reply button to be permanently there, but have it appear on hover.
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Anonymous commented
It seems you have a lot of dissatisfied commenters here. It seems that consensus is that we'd like to be able to pull out Chat/Contacts in it's own window for easier chat/calling capabilities without leaving a team/channel we're working on. Can you make that possible? We're losing a lot of productivity time clicking all the time trying to open a chat when someone sends us a chat or to send a chat, or just to simply see "who's online". Having it outside the Teams app (if a user so chooses) seems to be the best way around this. Any chance we can get this back into working on it status?
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Anonymous commented
Idea was shared in December 2016. If they were going to deal with this you'd think it would have happened by now. It still needs to happen, but I wouldn't hold your breath at this point. The forced retirement of Skype many of us are dealing with make this a huge deal. Chat is not functional for the purposes we've used Skype for over the last decade.
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Raargh commented
Hate teams. Skype so much better. Thinking seriously about quitting my job because Teams is so bad.
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Anonymous commented
This is true, and is further aggravated by the fact that Teams does not let you resize the window below a little over half of my laptop screen, making it really frustrating to multitask between teams and another window. A freely resizable window would go a long way in improving the experience.
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LavendarChild0 commented
Where are we on this project? We are at the tail end of 2020 and I still don't have compact view, when we've been asking for it for years now.
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Zia Geelani commented
Agreed. Teams is waaay too big, all the windows open massive and kill screen space. You have to resize manually, if you can, and it's getting increasingly annoying to use. With Skype already in the stable, how can this be so wrong? Thanks.
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Anonymous commented
It is now November 2020 - Is there any sign of a compact TEAMS version yet.
Regards
Alex