Teams Meetings appear to take a lot of CPU (avg 32%)
When running a Teams Meeting on my Surface Pro i7 (2017), my screen-sharing, video meeting used about 30-32% of my CPU constantly. This seems different than Skype for Business. My battery life went from 100% to 35% over the 2 hour meeting.

Thank you for your reports. We are aware of recent performance issues with Microsoft Teams meetings, especially on laptops and when using external monitors. The team is working to resolve these issues.
In the meantime, please find troubleshooting information here: https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/troubleshoot/known-issues/teams-slow-video-meetings-laptops-4k.
29 comments
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Wilmer Bravo Zapata commented
This is not happening with Surface devices only; I am experiencing the same with a Lenovo P52 Workstation laptop (We are talking about high specs computers here, with Intel Xeon 6 cores and 64 GB ram). When video enabled or sharing screen the system performance is painful, and when we try to share screen while solving something together it is so frustrating.
By the way... I have 3 monitors. -
Bernardo commented
Teams is using most of my processor (>30%) and approx 1GB of memory, while at the same time being unnaceptably slow.
The worst part is that it is getting worst, not better.
The status is "working on it", but would you mind to give us insights on what are you doing to address it and estimation on when do you expect to have this issue fixed? -
Jonas commented
The "workaround" provided is not acceptable. You might as well ask the users to not use Teams at all. Teams meetings are very interactive, and I usually use my Surface Book 2 monitor as well as 2 external QHD monitors while having meetings, in order to view participants on screen 1, share screen 2 and take notes on screen 3. As others have already written: this is not acceptable - it is a Microsoft program, on Microsoft OS running on Microsoft Hardware - you are it. You acknowledged the problem August 14th 2020, that is 7 (SEVEN) months ago. What are you doing to solve this???
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Brad commented
MS Please fix excessive memory usage by MS Teams. Problem is >3 years old.
Ohh, wait, that's not in the roadmap:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?rtc=1&filters=Microsoft%20Teams -
Hans Frank commented
The "workaround" is nothing but putting a low speed spare tire on your car - an emergency solution - not a fix. We are using this everyday, often with additional screens when running meetings etc. - because they are needed - stripping away anything that makes a smooth teams meeting seems like the wrong way to "solve" a problem ?? I have dusted of a 10 year old mac book pro - that runs teams, multiple screens with zero problems. I am a big fan of the Surface - but this is not acceptable - it is a Microsoft program, on Microsoft OS running on Microsoft Hardware - you are it...
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Anonymous commented
Does Microsoft intend on fixing this issue anytime this century? I'm a math teacher who bought a Surface Pro because I thought it would be absolutely sensational to teach my students with. We're now going on just about a year of online teaching because of the pandemic, and Microsoft hasn't solved the issue since I first discovered it over one year ago. The lag when I screen share renders my Surface Pro utterly unusable. Honestly, how does this not embarrass the company more? I'm considering selling my Surface, which has become and unusable piece of garbage for the purpose I purchased it for, and replacing it with a simple iPad. Let me be clear: I've never liked Apple products, but at least those work as intended.
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Jeremy commented
useless on my brand new surface pro 7 too. I wish I'd gone for the M1 MacBook Air. This ought to be more embarrassing for Microsoft but clearly it isn't.
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Zoe commented
Same issue here on my surface pro. Please fix it ASAP as it is so frustrating and counterproductive. It is fascinating that an MS software perform much worse on an MS PC. I mean, do you pretest how your own products work and interact with each other? I don't expect much synergy but at least please don't be so destructive.
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Theodor commented
I’m using a Thinkpad, brand new, and I experience the same thing. Teams takes over the computer and making it unusable. Everything lags. I thought it was the computer, but reading through this thread makes it look like Teams might be to blame. I have similar experiences with Zoom and Slack as well when sharing the screen, but Teams is much worse than the others.
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Patrice commented
Hello,
I definitely don't think it's just related to team. With a Surface Pro 7 (and previously a 4 and a 5) all the remote sharing tools I tried have the same issue and make the machine almost unusable because of its slowness. It's a real pain and a real reason to chose another machine.
Thank to MS to fix it ASAP ! -
Andy commented
15" Surface Book 2 i7 w/ GTX 1060. Running Windows 10 1909 (latest my org supports). I've had the computer rebuilt (reimaged) twice to no avail. I've updated to the latest Surface Book 2 drivers, and have flashed the Surface Dock firmware to the latest rev multiple times over the last two years. My home ISP is fiber and delivers 100 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up, and I connect via WiFi. At my organization i have gigabit ethernet.
Regardless of whether I'm using the built-in screen of the Surface, or while connected to my external monitor, Teams performance is intolerable. The integrated GPU (not the discrete GTX 1060) will become nearly entirely consumed. My Teams video lags and my computer, in general, becomes unresponsive. Changing between windows while this is occurring is dreadfully slow, and forget about sharing my screen, that's a no-go. My colleagues use the background blurring effect, but whenever I try to use it things go south quickly. Recently I found that fitting attendees videos to frame, as opposed to letting Teams actively crop them, helped ever so slightly. But even so, general performance during Teams videos is horrible.
I'm the only one on my team with a Microsoft Surface. I'm also the only one on my team experiencing this issue with Teams. The rest of my organization primarilly uses Dell Latitude and Optiplex comptuers. They do not have these problems.
As an aside, I have similar performance issues when using Zoom, while my colleagues do not. I have my suspicions that the Surface Book 2 simply has a toxic brew of tech that is causing my video conference related issues. I manage IT at my organization, and I will not be getting another Surface, nor will I recommend them. It's astonishing to me that MS would not be able to remedy these issues for the two years I've had the device, and given the current pandemic-driven remote work world we're living in this is more important than ever.
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Chahine Mansour commented
any update regarding high CPU when using Teams?. we are facing this on lenovo thinkpad
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Bhavin Gangar commented
it seems so counterintuitive that other company devices work fine with teams and Surface struggles .. but that is exactly what i have been experiencing .. extremely unresponsive UI when the video calls are on
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Anonymous commented
Teams is so laggy to the point it almost doesn't function as a messaging app on a late 2015 iMac 4770k, 32GB ram, NVME SSD. This should be #1 priority.
This seems to be a well documented issue caused by CPU usage spikes. Typing lags constantly in teams, perhaps once every 5 to 10 seconds, regardless of background CPU usage. I'll be typing a message and hit enter to post it, and start typing another one only to find the start of my next sentence has been included in the first message because Teams has lagged. I've checked activity monitor and can see noticeable spikes caused by the 'Microsoft Teams Helper' process.
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Ana commented
Vote here for the same issue - here we have more chance:
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Ana commented
I have a problem with the high memory usage of Teams - up to 1 GB only for chat.
This is insane, my computer is lagging, and I need to work! Reduce it please.
My laptop:
Intel Core i5
8 GB RAM, x64 -
Anonymous commented
Video meetings is disaster.
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Michael commented
Definite MEMORY LEAK.
Running Teams on Win 10 1909, with a new i7 laptop with 12GB RAM and 500GB SSD. When I do a video call with my webcam turned on, Teams will gradually consume all memory and crash (takes from 5 to 15 minutes). This happens every time - not intermittent. And, this happens with the client as well as browser.
Zoom and WebEx work flawlessly.
Microsoft, clean up your product! Try a native development platform.
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Brian commented
Yes, video meetings exacerbate it (I've seen it consuming nearly 3GB after an hour) but just participating in a text chat can push it over 1GB pretty quickly, with it slowly growing higher over time.
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Anonymous commented
When using Microsoft Teams on the app with a Microsoft Surface Pro - the use of teams kills the processor speed so you cannot do anything else. If you turn video off speed increases. This is with a very good broadband connection.