How to keep Teams active on Windows

Why Teams goes Away on Windows

Windows keeps a counter of the time since your last keyboard or mouse input. Teams reads it, and after about 5 minutes it changes your status to Away. Locking the session or letting the PC sleep has the same effect straight away. The guide to keeping your Teams status Available covers the causes and every alternative.

Changing the screen and sleep timeouts in Settings, or running PowerToys Awake, keeps the PC and the display on. Neither one sends input, so the idle counter keeps growing and the status still changes. The comparison is in caffeinate and PowerToys Awake for Teams.

Requirements

The tray icon and its menu

TeamsActivo shows a cup in the system tray, next to the clock. It may sit behind the arrow for hidden icons, and you can drag it onto the taskbar so it stays visible.

Hovering over the icon shows the state and the reason. A click opens the menu. The labels are currently in Spanish, shown here with what each one does:

• Mantener activo ahora (keep active now): manual switch. Works with Teams closed and outside work hours. It is not remembered after a restart.
• Automático cuando Teams está abierto (automatic while Teams is open): on by default. Turns on while Teams is running and off when it closes.
• Pausar hasta cerrar Teams (pause until Teams closes): stops the app for as long as Teams stays open.
• Solo en horario laboral (work hours only): off by default. Automatic mode only acts Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 19:00, local time.
• Parar tras X horas sin uso real (stop after X hours without real use): 1, 2, 4 or 8 hours, or never. The default is 4 hours. It resumes as soon as you use the PC again. The movements made by the app do not count as real use.
• Iniciar con Windows (start with Windows): adds or removes automatic start.
• Salir (quit): closes the app and leaves Windows as it was.

What it does every 15 seconds

1. It decides whether it should be active: manual mode, or automatic mode with Teams open (and within work hours, if you asked for that).
2. It checks whether anything pauses it: a locked session, or too many hours without real use.
3. If active, it asks Windows to keep the display and the system awake.
4. It reads the time since your last input. At 60 seconds or more, it sends a relative mouse movement of 1 pixel and back. That resets the Windows idle counter, which is what Teams uses to mark you Away.
5. It skips the movement if a mouse button is held down or the window in front is full screen (a presentation, a video, a game). If you are using the PC, it does nothing at all.

Limits on Windows

• Locked session. With the session locked the app moves nothing, and Teams shows Away. It never stops you from locking with Win+L.
• Automatic lock. While the app is active the PC is not considered idle, so it will not lock by itself from inactivity (except through the stop after X hours option). Lock with Win+L whenever you get up.
• Group Policy and Intune. If your organisation requires the screen to lock after a period of inactivity, check its policy before using the app. Some policies block PowerShell scripts or simulated input, and then the app may not work. If the PowerShell execution policy is fixed by Group Policy, the app will not start.
• Administrator windows. When the window in front runs as administrator, Windows blocks simulated movement from a normal process.
• Full screen. During a presentation or a video the mouse is not moved.
• Remote Desktop and Citrix. Your status is decided by the machine where Teams runs. Install the app on that machine.

Use it on your own PC and within your organisation's policies. If you cannot install software at all, a USB device is the alternative: see mouse jiggler or TeamsActivo.

If something does not work

• No icon. Look behind the arrow for hidden icons in the tray.
• Windows blocks the downloaded files. The installer unblocks them for you. If you run the app without installing, right-click the file, open Properties and choose Unblock.
• Teams still shows Away. Check that the cup is green, that the window in front is not running as administrator, and remember that Away is expected while the session is locked. Errors are written to %LOCALAPPDATA%\TeamsActivo\TeamsActivo.log.
• The screen never turns off. That is the intended effect while the app is active. Pause it, switch off the manual option or quit the app.

How to install TeamsActivo on Windows

1. Start the trial. Subscribe at teams-active.es. The licence key arrives by email.
2. Download the Windows version. Get the Windows download from the downloads page and unzip it to a folder.
3. Run the installer. Open PowerShell in that folder and run: powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1. It copies the app to your user profile, adds a Start menu shortcut and asks whether to start with Windows. No administrator rights are needed.
4. Find the cup in the tray. The app starts by itself after installing. Look for the cup next to the clock, or behind the arrow for hidden icons.
5. Enter the licence key. Click the cup, choose "Introducir clave…" (enter key) and paste the key you received.
6. Leave automatic mode on. Automatic mode is the default: the cup turns green while Teams is running and the app stops when Teams closes.