How to disable attendee video/camera in Microsoft Teams meetings

Video control (ability to disable) attendee video is rolling to Microsoft Teams meetings. This will be possible to set in meeting options (not rolled out yet) and seems to be present only in Teams Desktop app at the moment. It tells that the rollout is in early steps and you can not prepare this in advance. Yet. But it should roll to meeting options soon as well.

Having this ability to disable attendees from turning camera on is very important for webinars, education and townhalls for example. Not only it prevents accidental or random videos showing to others but it also makes sure that attendee’s videos don’t end in webinar recordings for example. This is also a GDPR and privacy protection issues – especially when webinar recordings are shared publicly.

You can control cameras in the meeting when you have some participants as attendees. Going to Participants menu you can then click on Disable Camera for attendees.

Disabling camera gives you a warning

When you have disabled camera you can see the icon at the attendee list

And the status is also shown in the meeting tiles

You can also disable an individual attendee’s video via … menu.

And naturally you can also enable an individual attendee’s video just like you can enable their mic.

And from attendee’s point of view: they can not turn on their camera.

Adding an app to a meeting while in a meeting

This feature, ability to add an application to the meeting during the meeting also rolled out with Disable camera.

You don’t have to close the meeting (or navigate to meeting details) for adding apps anymore

So in case you missed adding a poll to a meeting – you can do it now very easily