Microsoft Teams is the hub for workplace collaboration. It has oodles of features that promote collaboration and teamwork. The whole system exists so you can work productively.

But when everything is happening on Microsoft Teams, notifications can get out of hand pretty quickly. Especially channel notifications. Some people just don’t understand the concept of private chats and have all trivial, could-have-been-a-private message conversations in channels. Channels! That are meant for everyone. Jeez!

But no matter how annoying they get, it’s not like you can tell them to mosey off the channel to the realm of private chats. All you can do is manage your end of the channel notifications so that the annoying and unimportant content gets filtered, and you only get notified about matters concerning you. Good thing that there are plenty of ways to manage channel notifications.

Hide a Channel

You’ll only get notifications for channels that are on your teams list, i.e., if you have hidden a channel, you won’t receive notifications for it. This also works as a quick way to turn off channel notifications.

Note: You cannot hide the ‘General’ channel.

To hide a channel, go to the channel on the list of channels and lists, and click on the ‘More options’ icon (three dots) next to the channel name. Then, select the ‘Hide channel’ option from the menu.

Hide a channel and poof! no notifications. Except when someone “@” mentions you or the channel or marks a message as important. Then, the channel will hop right back in the list of your channels. And you’re gonna have to hide it again.

Permanently Turn Off All Notifications

Hiding a channel is one of the quickest ways to turn off any notifications until you have to hide it again. It can become pretty annoying pretty quickly. The more permanent solution is to disable notifications entirely. And Microsoft Teams gives you a lot of control over your channel notifications.

Go to the channel in the channel list, and click on the ‘More options’ icon towards the right.

Then, go to ‘Channel Notifications’ from the menu. A sub-menu will appear. You have three options to manage your notifications: ‘All activity’, ‘Off’, and ‘Custom’. By default, ‘Custom’ is selected. With custom notifications, you get notifications whenever someone mentions the channel, in addition to any personal mentions and direct replies. If you select ‘All Activity’, you’ll get notifications for all the posts on the channel too.

Select ‘Off’ to disable all notifications from the channel except for direct replies and personal mentions.

Disable Notifications for Certain Conversations in the Channel

Sometimes, you want to stay up to date with all the happenings in the channel, except that one highly annoying conversation. It’s a good thing that Microsoft Teams lets you mute just a particular conversation too.

Go to the conversation in the channel you want to mute, and go to the first post in the conversation. That is, it won’t work if you do this with a reply in the conversation, you need to go to the original post. Hover over it, and then click on the ‘More options’ icon (three dots) that appears at the end of reaction emoji strings.

Then, select ‘Turn off Notifications’ from the menu.

Note: You’ll still receive notifications if someone mentions you in the conversation.

Disable Notifications for Personal Mentions and Replies

When you turn off notifications for the channel, all notifications except for direct replies and personal mentions are disabled. But if you want, you can also turn off notifications for personal mentions as well as replies to your posts.

Click on the ‘Profile’ icon on the Title Bar and select ‘Settings’ from the menu.

Then, go to ‘Notifications’ from the navigation menu on the left.

In notifications, you’ll find ‘Personal Mentions’ under the mentions section. By default, ‘Banner and email’ is selected. Click on it to expand the drop-down menu. You’ll see two more options to choose from: ‘Banner’, and ‘Only show in feed’. If you select ‘Banner’, you’ll not receive an email every time someone mentions you. You’ll only get a notification banner, the one that appears on the bottom-right corner on Windows, and top-right on macOS.

Select ‘Only Show in Feed’ to turn off notifications.

There is no option to completely turn off notifications for personal mentions, but this is the next best thing. Your feed is what appears when you go to the ‘Activity’ tab in Microsoft Teams. So, you won’t get constant, annoying notifications all the time, but you can still stay on top of everything.

Now, under the ‘Messages’ section, go to ‘Replies to Conversations I started’. Click on the drop-down menu, and select ‘Off’ from the menu.

Bonus Tip: If you only want to disable all notifications only for a little while, set your status as ‘Do Not Disturb’. You won’t receive any notifications until you change your presence back.

Channel notifications can get very annoying, especially when there are a lot of members in your team. But managing them efficiently can give you the nice little quiet time you need to focus on what’s actually important.