Remote working has forced all of us to bring out the newest aspects of our personality. While we may have started by jumping into our day into pajamas, soon we realized that this isn’t sustainable. In order to stand out, you may have to try absolutely new approaches now. One such way, which can also be great conversation kicker, is to pick a cool custom background in teams/zoom call.
We recently had a virtual get together where there was a contest (of sorts) wherein person with best background would win. That is when creative juices started flowing and I came up with certain ideas. Let us get started with how and why of custom background on teams:
How to Add a custom background for teams?
There are two ways to achieve this:
1. From the teams app itself
- Simply click on the three dots (More actions) shown in the screenshot below and select “Apply background effects”.
- Once you do that, a window with background settings will be visible
- You can select “add new” to add the background of your choice.
- Downsides? You can only add one at a time.
2. From the Folder access
What if you want to give multiple backgrounds a shot? What if you are still doing your hit and trial and want to explore the correct angles. It will be really difficult to add each one of those master pieces you just shortlisted separately. Bulk upload using the below method:
- Open file explorer
- Click This PC/My Computer
- Select Windows (C:)
- Open the users folder
- Select user profile (if you are on a company laptop, it’ll be ‘firstname.lastname’ mostly)
- Open folder named AppData (not visible unless you have enabled viewing hidden files and folders through view tab in the file explorer itself)
- Open the roaming folder
- Select the folder named Microsoft and within that go to the teams folder
- Open the folder called Backgrounds and then uploads
- Copy paste all the images you have shortlisted in this folder.
- Restart teams and go to “apply background effects” and you will see all these images a part of them.
Cool Ideas for custom backgrounds:
Creativity knows no bounds. This mantra needs to be followed here too. Below are a couple of ideas I really liked as a background:
– OFFICE SPACE
All of us surely miss our office a lot. Since it may not be possible to go to the office as of now, least we can do is mimic that experience of sitting in beautiful meeting room or balcony where we used to attend our meetings. I got the exact images of our office meeting rooms/workstations from one of my colleagues and ever since they’ve been a part of my formal meetings.
– THE HENDRIX
This crazy idea was an outcome of the contest. Rather, this custom background almost won it. Once you sit in front of this virtual background, your fingers will automatically find the notes to Purple Haze. Okay, may be not that but you can at least cover the face of the legend himself and let that afro hairstyle work for you. Cool right?
– The Angel
Another tough contender in that contest was what I’d like to call- The Angel. A simple halo hovering over your head as if next billion dollar idea is going to come from you only. Anything that comes out of your mouth would become words of wisdom automatically.
– The Eavesdropper:
This one was a clear winner. We all have eavesdropped or encountered one in our lifetime. This time around, I decided to be one myself. I took a photo of myself from my workstation and voila! Next time I apply this background I am virtually eavesdropping my own conversation. Make it look like you are totally judging that conversation.
Conclusion
By no means these are the only ways you can keep your virtual background game strong. Let that creativity kick in and just do your thing. It could be one of those sane things you could do in this otherwise chaotic world that we live in right now.
Until Next Time..
