Microsoft’s latest push for dominance in the workplace is to essentially integrate Microsoft Teams into everything. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and businesses switch to a work-from-home model, it’s becoming more and more important that we have reliable services to communicate with each other.

In other words, Microsoft saw how much cash Zoom was making, felt bad about still supporting Skype, and brought Teams to workplaces that already have a Microsoft 365 subscription for the Pro end of Windows. However, with the release of Windows 11, they’ve also just straight up included it with the operating system and forced an annoying little icon that you cannot remove unless you go into the settings.

Change the settings

Hit the start button and in the new menu, just simply press the Settings icon to be taken into the menu. From there, on the sidebar, just press Personalisation and you’ll be taken into another menu, where you can alter everything to do with your PC. Backgrounds, colors, themes, all the good stuff. We want the Taskbar menu, which will then present the various items you can turn off on the Taskbar.

Simply toggle the “On/Off” switch and you’re in business! The little purple icon will be gone and you can proceed to clutter up the taskbar with your own things as you go.

Microsoft plans to release Windows 11 on October 5th, with a hefty bump in requirements, that is seeing a majority of Intel’s 7th generation and below, as well as AMD’s Ryzen 1 and below, get left behind. Be sure to read about how to activate the TPM 2.0 on your system and any hardware requirements (like motherboards and CPUs) that you might be missing out on.

Interested in a Windows 11 ready device? We've covered the recent announcements of the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio and how it might be the best in the argument if a Surface Pro 8 is worth the upgrade from a Surface Pro 7!

About the Author

Joel Loynds

Joel is a a lover of janky games, Magic the Gathering, and going down rabbit holes. For PC Guide he has written about peripherals, the Steam Deck, retro games, news and more.