feature hardware microsoft teams video video conferencing

Microsoft Teams Background Blur Not Showing

Update (6/8/2020): This appears to be resolved as Microsoft have updated the requirements. AVX2 is required for computers running less than Windows 10.


The optional Background video effects are not supported on processors without an AVX2 instruction set running on Windows 8.1 or below.


For me running Windows 10, this is working for me now using AVX instruction sets.

An issue I noticed that while working from home during this crazy COVID-19 period was that on my home computer I wasn’t presented with the option for Background Blur or Effects. Today I decided to dig deeper to see what’s going on.

Clearing cache – no fix.
Log off and Log on – no fix.
Uninstall and reinstall – no fix.

My computer at the office worked fine so it wasn’t a tenant setting so what is going on?

CPU Support

It turns out Microsoft Team requires CPUs with Advanced Vector Extension 2 (AVX2) support to perform the Background Blur and Background Effects rendering. Without this support, the features will not be available to you.

AVX2 is supported by PCs that have a post-Haswell chipset on Intel CPUs.

Turns out my computer is too old and only supports AVX[1].

How to find if your CPU supports AVX2?

The easiest method for me was to download and run Speccy.

This is a nice fee utility that give you great detail of your hardware, from CPU, RAM, etc.
Using the CPU information, find the Instructions line and here you should find the AVX support of you CPU.

More Information

Here is an article by Tony Redmond that goes in to more detail on the Background Blur feature for Microsoft Teams.

https://office365itpros.com/2018/09/25/background-blur-teams-meetings/

Also see the the Hardware Requirements for Microsoft Teams

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Daniel Bs Tech Blog

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading