How to use Pop out apps in Teams

Microsoft Teams recently got a new feature to Teams Desktop client: ability to Pop out application from Teams UI into a separate window. If you have the New Meeting -experience checked on in Teams Desktop Client Settings you can start utilizing this feature. This is a follow up to earlier Pop out chat -feature.

If you right-click on top of the application in Teams (like Tasks) you can see you have an option to pop it out to se separate window.

And in the result you can see Tasks open to a new window.

You can do this to several application in Teams. For example if you have Power Apps that have been installed to Teams as applications you can pop them out as well:

And this applies to several team channel tab applications as well. For example Power Automate can be popped out. You identify eligible applications when you see the pop out icon.

Yes – that is a lots of popped out applications in that screen. I can see it will have it’s uses while I very rarely use pop out chat feature – and it has been out a long time. Sometimes it is good to use large displays for this multitasking but as can be seen in the example picture it is not always smart.

This feature is one more reason why Power Apps and bots should be packaged as Teams applications & distributed to employees. Business-solutions can be used in separate windows (thus no need to navigate and reload the app) while collaboration work can continue in the main Teams meeting. However there will be a point when jumping between windows is the same as context switching and multi-tasking. That will then start eating value from having all apps in the same UI. Because the feature exists: it doesn’t mean it has to be used. It is there to allows different ways and practices for working.

As a good to know: you can also jump between different application from the Windows taskbar.

That makes the use of these pop out apps and chats a bit more useful. I hope that one day this pop out expands to meetings so we could separate selected videos and content area to different windows (=different monitors). That is when these will start to become even more useful.