Microsoft Teams is trying to fix accidental hand-raising

If you’ve ever had the embarrassing displeasure of interrupting a Microsoft Teams meeting by accidentally hitting the “raise hand” feature, then I have some good news for you. Microsoft is redesigning its online meeting software, which will move the raise hand button from the main toolbar and allow users to personalize the controls displayed there.

The update was announced on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and is expected to roll out sometime in June this year. The changes will group the Raise Hand feature under the Reactions button “to reduce mis-clicks,” according to Microsoft, which is handy because the two functions are easy to conflate at a glance. That should prevent Teams users from disrupting calls with hand-raising when they actually wanted to send emoji reactions, or simply by missing the intended button.

New customizations will also enable users to pin, unpin, and reorder controls on the meeting toolbar, and the “Leave” button will be “clearly separated on the right” — suggesting that this also intends to remedy people accidentally closing calls or frantically looking for how to leave when meetings are finished. Microsoft hasn’t provided any images of the expected redesign, but says that it’s “designed to be faster and easier to use,” even if it “may feel different at first.”