Teams could be moving away from Electron for its desktop app

Screenshots and information about a new version of Microsoft Teams popped up over the weekend (via OnMSFT). The first details came from well-known leaker WalkingCat, who shared a link to Teams Alpha. To use that version of Teams, you need an internal Microsoft account, so you can’t just download and test it. That being said, some people managed to get it working.

Twitter user Jesse Mikael Järvi appears to have gotten Teams Alpha to work and shared some insights about it on Twitter.

According to Järvi, the app’s performance is better than the Electron version of Teams. Järvi notes that a version with native code would be even better, but that might not ever happen.

Microsoft has a doc about how Teams works, including how it’s built on Electron. Being built on Electron allows Microsoft to develop Teams quickly in a way that works across platforms, but it’s not the only way to see those benefits. That doc actually has a screenshot comparing the memory usage of the Teams Web app and the current Teams desktop app. The web app uses slightly more memory in that instance, though that could change in future versions of Teams.

According to WalkingCat, the app is codenamed Maglev. We don’t have a release date or any more details about the app at this time. The new web-based version of Teams might replace the Electron version at some point, but that’s only speculation at this time.