Gallery view can display up to 49 participants and will be the primary layout going forward.

Microsoft will prioritize improving the Gallery view as the main meeting layout for most use cases.

The update will roll out gradually, affecting the view menu and feature availability.

The shift aims to simplify the meeting experience and reduce behind-the-scenes complexity to free engineers for video quality, stability, and performance enhancements.

Microsoft plans to retire Together mode in Teams, a pandemic-era feature that placed participants in virtual scenes, with the retirement effective around mid-2016? No—on June 30, 2026, the company will end Together Mode.

In place of Together mode, Microsoft will focus on performance improvements by promoting Gallery mode, a traditional grid layout that is less resource-intensive.

Katarina Tranker, a Teams product manager, announced the retirement in a blog post titled Goodbye Together mode, hello simplified meeting layouts.

The move aligns with an industry trend away from immersive layouts toward simpler, standardized interfaces and AI-powered productivity tools.

Overall, Microsoft’s strategy is to standardize meeting visuals, improve usability, and ensure a cohesive experience across video calls and content sharing.

The transition prioritizes Gallery mode as the default video view to streamline the interface and boost video quality, freeing capacity for foundational video improvements.

Together mode is being replaced by an enhanced Gallery layout and simplified views for presenters and content sharing to reduce visual clutter.

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