Major Microsoft Teams Performance Update Rolling Out in January 2026

Microsoft is splitting the Teams calling stack into a new background process on Windows to cut launch times and improve reliability in busy meetings.

Microsoft has announced a significant under-the-hood change to the Teams Desktop Client on Windows, specifically designed to address long-standing complaints about its sluggish performance and high system resource use.

Instead of relying on one large engine to power everything, the company is splitting the workload.

The core of the performance boost comes from introducing a dedicated, secondary process. Currently, the main Teams application (ms-teams.exe) handles chats, file sharing, and the memory-intensive tasks of audio and video calls.

Under the new architecture, Microsoft will introduce a separate file, known as ms-teams_modulehost.exe, that will exclusively manage the complex “calling stack.” This means that when you join a meeting, the most resource-heavy function will be offloaded to its ...