You’ll soon be able to download Microsoft Teams from the Microsoft Store that comes built into Windows, according to a roadmap update from the company, as spotted by Neowin. Yes, you read that right. Microsoft’s work communications app hasn’t been available on its own store up to this point; it either had to be downloaded from the web or installed alongside the rest of Office 365. (Though, as ZDNet notes, it was available at one point on the store exclusively for people using Windows 10 in S mode, which restricted where you could install software from.)
According to the roadmap, Teams will be available on the store sometime next month for both Windows 10 and 11. The version for Windows 10 will be usable with personal, work, and school accounts, while the 11 version will just be for work and school accounts. Windows 11 already has a version of Teams that comes built into it, which is meant to be used for chatting with friends and family using a personal account, not as a Slack alternative.
Microsoft promised Teams for its store last year when it introduced the Microsoft Store redesign. That was also when it announced that you’d be able to install Android apps on Window 11 via the Amazon app store — a capability that’s ironically given you the power to grab Teams from an app store on your Windows machine for a few months as long as you were willing to use the mobile version.
It’s good to see that Microsoft is working on making it easier to get Teams on Windows for those who need it. And as a dual PC / Mac user, I’m happy to hear that it’s also testing an Apple Silicon-native version of Teams; hopefully, that’ll help with the absolutely glacial launch times for the app on M1 Macs. (Though, currently, you have to download the macOS version from the web instead of using the App Store.)