Lock the Video Spotlight
In Skype for Business hosted meetings, there is a feature called "Lock the Video Spotlight" that allows you to choose a video feed that's displayed to all participants. This feature does not appear to be in the Teams client today, and it doesn't appear on the Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams Capabilities Roadmap.
In some Teams meetings I want all my participants to just view one presenters video stream and not have the 4 participant split view. We need a way for the Teams meeting host to force their video to be prominent from the participants view.

This item is officially on the backlog.
43 comments
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Damon Betlow commented
It is listed in the November 15, release notes (pin video streams during a meeting).
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Erik commented
This is rather confusing. Here it says that this is on the backlog, while in this uservoice request below it is marked as "COMPLETED".
Either way, it seem to work (at least for us) to pin other user's video, but not your own.
And recording is still pretty much useless. Even if you pin another user's video so that it displays in full screen your recording will be split into half screen or quarter screen - extremely annoying!
Does anyone know of any workaround?
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Tim Johnson commented
Anyone see or hear any update on this?
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Jay commented
Currently I have 3 clients asking for this feature and it has become a make or brake for some of my Surface Hub deals
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Dennie Mortensen commented
This definitely needs to be moved up on the list. Meetings are not always collaborative. We do training videos and use the Chat feature for interaction as too many attendees can cause chaos!!! We also record them for future playback, so recording the screen with different panes of peoples is not super effective.
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Anonymous commented
Well, it's not like the migration from Skype to Teams are ready at writing moment. There's a couple of basic functions that should have been in place from the beginning. For example, in Skype you could choose presenters and attendees, now everyone is a presenter...
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Anonymous commented
User should be able to choose how many video panes, 1, 2, 3, 4,6,8 and ability to pin panes and let others rotate based on last speaker.
lync had pin capabilities pre skype.
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Rachel commented
To do a loop around, I just open my camera app on my computer, maximize it, and present my screen to the other participants. It works for the time being while waiting on this feature to get added.
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Sam commented
Can we get a status update on this feature?
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PeterGV commented
We want to host remote seminars using Teams... can't do that without this feature. So, despite having Team fully in-use internally, we now host our remote seminars using Zoom. Very, very, silly.
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Rayee Roded commented
I think this is absolutely ridicules that they don't have it implemented yet. Anyway this should be prioritized
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Diego Angulo commented
Please we need an update about it.... we already migrated all users from Skype to Teams and we use Teams for video conferencing where one member is the presenter... now we see all the participants in a divided window.
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Timbo commented
@Alex - Can you tell us what "officially on the backlog" really means? Its a roadblock for our Skype to Teams migration. Our distance learning facilities require this feature. Please provide an idea of when the feature will be available.
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Jon Vassar commented
Here's the Teams team missing the ball again on useful features for their customers. Like others, this is one of the few reasons we still have Skype for Business enabled on our tenant. This and dual screen use to split off video and content presentation are the ONLY things that keep Skype for Business alive for us.
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Craig D commented
This is the only reason we still use Skype over Teams for larger group or single presenter type meetings. This is a MUST HAVE feature before we can switch over to Teams only mode.
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Steve Yuroff commented
2019 bump: Yes, please. We are not all equal participants in all events: sometimes there's a speaker, and an audience- some in the room, some remote workers joining via Teams.
In that situation, the remotes workers shouldn't see their fellow remotes as equal screen space as the presenter, there should be an ability to make the speaker a larger visual priority.
Also- an active speaker highlight. GTM has it, as does Zoom, assuredly more that I haven't met. -
Anders Christensson commented
During Spring Planning we are using physical boards, and an pan-tilt-zoom camera, so we can focus on a specific area on the board. If the distant participants should be able to see the text on board they need to be able to see that video stream in full screen.
This functionallity exists in Skype for Business and is called Lock the Video Spotlight
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I would also be usefull to see the other particpants on a separate screen in the conference room, but this should be on an separate screen or via the projector. So the requirement is actually that each particpant should be able to configure how they want to view the camera streams. -
Anonymous commented
AMEN!!! This is a must-have in Teams. I just started using Teams and was confounded as to why I was unable to show a single video view to all participants.
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Chris Smith commented
HUGE
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Jesus Guzman commented
This Feature shall NEVER be left out. I can see it in Skype For Business, but if Microsoft is moving towards TEAMS, it needs to stay. Furthermore, lets improve it...LEts use this feature and show the Speaker in Spotlight!. That way when someones is talking it will show in bigger screen.
After all, Polycom does this and if we are moving under Microsoft's platform, we MUST have reasons to STAY within the platform and not going with other company that offers what we need.