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Comment by iambateman | Hacker News Reader

Just in case an MS engineer is reading these Teams gripes…

On Mac, Teams does not honor system-level Do not Disturb. So when I turn off notifications during a presentation at work and my friend sends me snarky comments about our boss…

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Teams’ notifications on Mac are an ongoing debacle. Because they are Microsoft’s own implementation, rather than using the system API, not only do they not respect DND, they also helpfully get lost behind other notifications that come in from properly designed applications.

According to the Microsoft admin updates I’m subscribed to, native notifications on Mac have been in a beta channel for months, with a full rollout pushed back repeatedly for no reason that I can discern.

Developers stubbornly refusing to utilize the tools provided by the operating system because they think they can do it better (90% of the time they can't) is one of my greatest pet peeves.

You should ONLY ever use your own engine for things like notifications if the particular OS doesn't support them (pre-10 Windows)

I believe that in this case it's simply convenience/laziness to have a single notifications codebase across both operating systems? That and Windows didn't have native notifications when it was first developed. Not that it excuses a big chat application from MS behaving this way, just saying that they probably didn't deliberately choose to re-implement notifications just because they didn't like the OS ones.

Some software also presents that in the settings as the choice between "native notifications, which don't have as many features" and "custom notifications, which have all bells and whistles". And the default of course is the one with more features, not the one that respects your settings. I think Mattermost was where I've seen that distinction.

Windows has had balloon notifications since Windows 2000. These show up as toast notifications by default in Windows 10, so compliant applications would be transitioned automatically.

This is what happens in an Electron world. Lots of experts around to make some JS+CSS notification boxes because they keep reinventing those for every SPA anyway, but.. integrate with the native system notifications? They don't even know how Electron works so how would they begin to do any of that.

AFAIK, every native app can subscribe and read all notifications, at least on Windows. So, sending notifications to the OS is a huge privacy issue.

overall I agree, but tbh I'm quite happy for Telegram Desktop having its own notifications - the system ones in my Ubuntu Gnome (went through a few LTS upgrades, but not heavily customized) are really messed up, especially when Firefox sends something

They also get lost when you're in fullscreen. If I wouldn't get them on my watch, I'd basically be unreachable on Teams.

Exactly. I have one screen and I am nearly always working in full screen. My mac is often muted at the same time. Like that I am able to miss many calls because MS Teams shows the notifications on a space which I am not using. This would be no issue if they used system notifications.

You would think its better on windows, but it's not. The notifications ignore the global notification settings and pop up even when you only allow notifications with priority. And they are using their own implementation as well

I see there is a setting in teams for using windows' notification vs using teams' notifications. I haven't tried it, so it probably doesn't actually work, but I figured I'd point it out.

To add insult, the notifications are a separate window on macOS. So when you use cmd+tab to switch _to_ Teams, you might end up in that notifications window. Even when there are no Teams notifications, that window remains. This is very painful when in full-screen mode, as cmd-tabbing to Teams simply doesn’t work.

I’m on the beta where you can switch to native notifications, but they’ve only implemented that (poorly) for chat notifications. Calls still use their own notifications. Poorly you ask? Well the notification doesn’t show the sender when posting in a group channel; it uses the group name as the notification title.

It makes me wonder how they manage to get it so wrong. Is there nobody at Microsoft who uses teams that they can ask for UX feedback? Does all the user feedback they collect go straight to the bin?

It's a competition among the sub-groups to see who can inflict the most damage...

They're registered as a separate window on Windows too. When I alt-tab, I frequently end up in the notification window.

My main question is, why are people still doing desktop apps in JS? (Yes, I know, cross-platform... There are other ways to do that.) They always end up breaking with the native UI conventions on the host OS, and they're stupidly resource hungry.

If you’re on a 2nd space in macOS, typing CMD-TAB to switch to the Teams window in 1st space will NOT display Teams and will keep you in 2nd space.

Breaking the native CMD-TAB shortcut is breathtaking…

(Workaround: switch to any other app in 1st space first, then switch to Teams…)

Well another workaround actually: CMD-TAB until focus is on Teams, DOWN, DOWN, RETURN does the trick as well. But, how embarassing...

Could be worse. In outlook for Mac, there are native notifications but the only button on them is “delete.” I thought it was dismiss for quite some time.

And when you use command-tab to delete search terms, i what it actually does is delete the highlighted email.

Microsoft ignoring default shortcuts or even assigning different behaviour in their various macOS apps is driving me insane. On Teams one cannot even discover shortcuts from the menubar as the menubar doesn’t contain any actions beside undo/redo.

Electron must be the new embrace extend extinguish of macOS.

I have native mac notifications? Menu / Settings / Notifications / Notification style / Mac.

Also the sound seems to register itself as a media sound, so it will hijack your play/pause functionality. If I'm playing music and get a call, pressing play/pause to stop my music will just stop the ringing while continuing to play the music. Additionally, if I get a call and pick up, later on if I hit play/pause it'll continue playing the Teams call jingle instead of my music.

It can even be seen in Big Sur with the new playing media icon in the top bar. If I click that I can see that there's an item for my music, and an item for Teams sounds.

My company was a fairly early adopter of Teams. I remember there being a user feedback forum that was such an optimistic place. Fixing notifications was one of the highest voted issues and the MS rep promised work was being done on it, but it never got fixed before we finally accepted the increased cost and moved to Slack.

If it makes you feel any better they use their own custom notifications in windows as well and it suffers all the same issues (doesn’t respect dnd, gets covered by/covers native notifications, etc)

Pro-tip: make a second user account on your system exclusively for presentations. There's nothing more unprofessional than some stupid notification popping up during a presentation.

That's a valid workaround that shouldn't be needed.

FWIW I turn off all contact apps (email, chat) entirely if it's important.

Is that easier than just switching user account? Essentially all we're talking about is having a separate environment. Maybe desktop environments could support multiple environments per user more easily, but it's not too bad to set it up with a separate user account.

That doesn't really work when the app you're presenting with is actually MS Teams, as for whatever reason, during a call when you're screen sharing, Teams still shows notification pop-ups.

In the company I work at, there are telepresence screens in each conference room that appear in Teams.

Projecting something onto the screen is done using Teams, so I can't disable Teams during the presentation. People often connect in from other conference rooms or their desks, by joining the call.

ICT probably wouldn't allow us to make another user account.

I agree that making a second user account is good practice for IoT meetups, church groups, or other presentations, but it might not actually work well in this company. Teams has plenty of other issues though, such as screen sharing in a group call after unplugging HDMI, or microphone input selection issues.

And when you share your screen the entire meeting window is minimized, helpfully showing your entire chat window.

Also, please make an M1-native version ASAP. Teams is my second worst app when it comes to memory pressure.

I don't think an M1 version would make much difference. It's just a horrifically bloated, sluggish garbage fire.

VS Code and Teams are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum for what an Electron app can be.

Fair enough.

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