Teams Chat image

In Microsoft Teams, using the chat feature has become an integral way we communicate within an organization. From individual chats with just one other team member to group chats and conversations in channels—chat is at the core of your Teams activities.

Because the chat feature is central to your Teams workplace, the platform offers a Chat density feature with two options to set your preference in how many chat messages you see at one time: Comfy and Compact.

Depending on the size of your monitor and viewing preference, you might want to change the amount of spacing that appears in your chat messages. Whether you want to optimize your view to see more text at once or read less text at a more comfortable level, Teams lets you customize the chat density to suit your needs.

By default, Chat density is set to Comfy mode. This mode displays more spacing between your chat messages but also takes up more real estate in your view and requires more scroll actions. The other chat density option is Compact mode, which condenses the space between your chat messages and requires less space and scroll action.

First, let’s look at the default Comfy mode:

  1. From the upper-right area of the Teams window, select more    > Settings > General.
  2. Under Chat density, select Comfy then the Close button.

Teams Comfy Chat Density Settings

Note in this mode your chat message is shaded in blue and the alignment is staggered by chat participant across the window with more space in and between the message threads:

Teams Chat-Comfy example

Now let’s look at the comparison of using Compact mode:

  1. From the upper-right area of the Teams window, select more    > Settings > General.
  2. Under Chat density, select Compact, then the Close button.

Teams Chat Density Settings-Compact

In this mode note how the chat messages are all aligned to the left of the chat window with several more message threads visible at one time:

Teams Chat-Compact example

So there you have it! It’s that simple to customize the display of your Chat environment in Teams using one of these Chat density modes. What’s your preference?

Learn how to Enhance Creative Collaboration with Microsoft Whiteboard in Teams or download our Guide to Simplifying IT for Small Businesses.