Microsoft Teams adoption accelerated dramatically during the pandemic, and companies everywhere continue to use the platform every day as a critical business tool, enabling their teams to collaborate wherever they might be located. Citrix has optimized the secure delivery of Teams for years, collaborating closely with Microsoft to ensure the best possible user experience for end users and optimal control for IT.

One of the most popular features of Teams is the ability to automatically detect your background and change it when using a webcam. This helps prevent distractions and allows participants to focus on each other and the topics at hand.

Citrix is pleased to announce a preview of background effects (background blur and background images) for optimized Microsoft Teams within Citrix DaaS and VDI environments! We’ve listened to our customers and have worked tirelessly to enable this feature.

Screenshots showing Microsoft Teams with background blur and background image behind the speaker.
Background blur and background image shown here in optimized Microsoft Teams (click to view image larger).

Once enabled, the feature behaves the same as Teams’ native background effects capability. Refer to Citrix product documentation for full guidance on setting it up in your environment. In summary, you need to:

  • Download the latest Citrix Workspace app for Windows (2207+)
  • Enable a client-side registry flag for background blur
  • Enable an optional additional registry flag for a background image replacement (this requires the JPEG file to be stored in the endpoint, as well)
  • Ensure your Microsoft Teams deployment is optimized per product documentation

In this preview, once the registry key is set, the webcam will always be blurred whenever Teams in the virtual desktop tries to access the camera, as there is no integration with the Teams UI yet.

We hope you enjoy this feature as much as we’ve enjoyed bringing it to you. Let us know in the comments below your thoughts and questions.

Disclaimer: The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and are subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.