How to Update Teams and Fix a Stuck Update Loop

Microsoft Teams updates itself, so most of the time there is nothing to do. The reason people end up searching is that it stopped updating — the app nags about an update that never installs, "Check for updates" is not where the guides say it is, or the thing that looks stale (a photo, a status, a calendar) was never about the app version at all.

This guide covers the update in one short section, then spends the rest of its time on the failures.

How to Update Microsoft Teams

Windows and Mac. Teams checks for updates when it starts and every few hours after that, whether or not the app window is open, and installs them in the background. You have to be signed in to the computer for this to happen. The update applies on the next restart of the app.

To take a waiting update immediately:

1. Click the More options (···) menu at the top of the Teams window.
2. Select Update and restart Teams.

If an update is already downloaded, a banner also appears at the top of the Teams window, and a Restart button appears next to the ellipsis. Either one applies it sooner than waiting for Teams to go idle.

Mac only: you can also select Help > Check for Updates from the menu bar. This opens Microsoft AutoUpdate, which is what actually updates Teams on macOS. Teams for Mac never restarts itself to finish — quit the app and reopen it.

iPhone and iPad. App Store → profile icon → find Microsoft Teams → Update.

Android. Google Play → profile icon → Manage apps & device → Updates available → update Teams.

Teams on the web. Nothing to do. Microsoft updates teams.microsoft.com server-side.

Linux. Manual updating from inside the app is not available. Updates come through your package manager or a fresh package from Microsoft.

Teams ships roughly twice a month, rolled out gradually, so it is normal for two people in the same organization to be on different versions for a week or two. Critical updates skip the schedule and go out immediately.

How to Check Your Teams Version

Select Settings and more (···) > Settings > About Teams and read the number under Version.

Do not try to compare that number against "the latest" — the rollout is staggered, so there is no single current version at any moment. Compare it against the calendar instead. Teams releases about twice a month, so:

That escalation is the key diagnostic. Teams does not nag at random — an in-app update alert means your client has already gone a month or more without a successful update.

Teams Says It Needs an Update and Won't Stop Asking

This is the "Teams needs an update" loop, and the reason it loops is almost always misunderstood. The message is not a reminder you can dismiss your way out of. Teams displays it because your version has aged past a threshold, and it keeps displaying it because the update keeps failing — the client asks, the download or install does not complete, and the client asks again.

So the fix is never "click update again harder." It is to find out why the update cannot complete. Work down this list:

1. Confirm you are signed in to the computer. Updates only run for a signed-in user session. Devices that sit at a lock screen or are used through a shared kiosk session frequently never update.

2. Force a restart of the app properly. Right-click the Teams icon in the system tray and choose Quit — closing the window is not enough, because Teams keeps running. Then reopen it and choose More options (···) > Update and restart Teams.

3. Check Delivery Optimization (Windows). Teams downloads updates through Windows Delivery Optimization, and only fetches the delta from your current version. If that service is stopped, or your organization has set the download mode policy to the unsupported bypass value (100), the download cannot happen at all and no amount of retrying helps.

   Get-Service DoSvc
   

   Copy

   If the service is stopped or disabled, that is your answer — and on a managed machine it is a conversation with IT rather than something to change yourself.

4. Reset the Teams app (Windows). This is the single most effective fix for a stuck update loop, because it rebuilds the app state without a full reinstall. Note that it deletes app data, including personalization settings:

   • Open Settings → Apps → Installed apps
   • Search for Microsoft Teams, select More options (...) next to it, then Advanced options
   • Under Reset, select Reset
   • Restart Teams

5. Reinstall from a current installer. Download from aka.ms/getteams and install over the top. Because the installer is always the latest build, this doubles as a manual update.

6. Work on the web while you sort it out. The blocking page itself offers "continue to Teams on the web," and teams.microsoft.com is always current. This is the right move when the device is managed and you are waiting on IT.

If the message specifically says the update could not be applied and to contact your administrator, skip to organization-blocked updates — that wording means a policy is involved, not a broken download.

Teams Won't Update on Windows

Microsoft documents a specific set of causes for Windows update failures. In rough order of how often they turn out to be the answer:

Delivery Optimization is disabled or misconfigured. Covered above. Teams has no fallback download path when Delivery Optimization cannot run.

The app package has been modified. New Teams is an MSIX package installed machine-wide under %programfiles%\WindowsApps, and Windows watches those file permissions closely. If anything has altered the files or their ACLs — a cleanup script, a security tool, a well-meant manual fix — Windows treats the app as corrupted. The symptoms are crashes, the app closing unexpectedly, and updates that never complete. Nothing under WindowsApps should be edited by hand; a reinstall is the recovery.

Network filtering blocks the Teams CDN. Updates come from Microsoft 365 endpoints, and blocking them breaks Delivery Optimization outright. Worth flagging to whoever runs your firewall: SSL inspection on Microsoft 365 endpoints is a documented cause of high update-failure and retry rates, even when nothing is technically blocked. Microsoft's guidance is to exclude those endpoints from inspection.

The operating system is out of support or unpatched. Update success is materially worse on Windows builds that are missing patches, and better on Windows 11, which carries the most current installer. Install outstanding Windows updates before concluding Teams is at fault.

WebView2 is blocked or out of date. New Teams renders through Microsoft Edge WebView2. On Windows it updates itself, so the failure case is something actively blocking it. It must be on a supported (current) version for Teams to update and run properly.

Teams Won't Update on Mac

Teams for Mac does not update itself. It hands the job to Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU), the same component that updates the rest of Office on macOS, and registers itself under the application ID TEAMS21. Nearly every Mac update failure is really a MAU failure.

Test whether MAU is even installed. Select Help > Check for Updates from the menu bar. That should open the Microsoft AutoUpdate window. If clicking it does nothing at all, MAU is missing or blocked — some firewall and security products remove it. That is the whole problem, and it needs your administrator.

Check the MAU registration. Open Terminal and run both of these:

defaults read /Library/Managed\ Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate2
defaults read com.microsoft.autoupdate2

Look for an entry for /Applications/Microsoft Teams.app. It should read like this:

"/Applications/Microsoft Teams.app" = {
    "Application ID" = TEAMS21;
};

Managed preferences take precedence, so if the first command returns an Applications block, that is the one that matters. Two failure patterns show up repeatedly: the entry is missing entirely, or it points at the old application name Microsoft Teams (work or school).app. Both need your administrator to correct the managed preferences profile.

Name mismatch on early-adopter machines. If your registration looks right but the app in /Applications is still called Microsoft Teams (work or school).app, the simplest fix is to download and install the current version from aka.ms/getteams; updates resume automatically afterwards.

Teams downloaded an update but nothing happened. Expected behavior. MAU stages the update alongside the running app and only swaps it in once you quit Teams. It will not restart the app for you. Quit fully — ⌘Q or right-click the dock icon and Quit — then reopen.

Where Is Check for Updates in the New Teams?

On Windows, it is gone. That is the honest answer, and it is why so many guides send people to a menu item that is not there.

The new Teams updates automatically and exposes only:

• More options (···) > Update and restart Teams — applies an update that has already downloaded
• The update banner at the top of the window, when one is waiting
• The Restart button next to the ellipsis

There is no button that forces Teams to go and look for an update on demand. If you want to guarantee you are on the latest build right now, install over the top from aka.ms/getteams.

On Mac, Help > Check for Updates does still exist in the menu bar, because macOS updates run through Microsoft AutoUpdate rather than through Teams itself. On Linux, there is no in-app manual update at all.

Classic Teams Is Gone: What That Means Now

A great deal of the confusion in this area comes from guides written during the transition. The timeline is finished:

Practical consequences:

• There is no "Try the new Teams" toggle to find. The rollout is complete; that switch is history.
• You cannot roll back to classic Teams. Not by toggle, not by policy, not by reinstalling it.
• New Teams is just "Teams" now. Comparisons of new versus classic are no longer a decision you make — the WebView2-based client is the only desktop client.
• If a device still shows classic Teams, it means the new client was never successfully installed there, usually because a group policy blocked it or the OS is below the minimum requirement. Those users see a message telling them classic Teams is no longer available and pointing them to the web app. Installing new Teams, or fixing the blocking policy, is the fix.
• GCC, GCC High, and DoD tenants are past end of availability too. There is no extended runway.

Your Organization Is Blocking Teams Updates

On a managed device, updates may not be yours to control, and this is normal rather than a fault. Signs you are in this situation:

• The update message names your IT department or tells you to contact your administrator.
• Teams is deployed through Intune, Configuration Manager, or another management tool.
• You do not have rights to run the installer from aka.ms/getteams.

What to do: report the version you are on (from Settings and more (···) > Settings > About Teams) and the exact message you are seeing. That distinction matters — an in-app warning means you are one to three months behind, while a blocking page means over three months, and the second is an urgent problem for whoever manages the deployment.

The things worth asking IT to check are the ones above: Delivery Optimization policy, SSL inspection on Microsoft 365 endpoints, and whether outstanding OS patches are pending on the device.

Download the Teams Update Manually

There is no standalone update package for Teams — no patch file, no incremental download you can fetch yourself. Delivery Optimization pulls only the differential from your current build, and that mechanism is not exposed to users.

The manual equivalent is to reinstall the current version over the top:

1. Download from aka.ms/getteams.
2. Quit Teams completely (right-click the tray or dock icon, then Quit).
3. Run the installer.
4. Sign back in.

Your chats, files, and settings live in the service, not in the local install, so nothing is lost. On Windows this replaces the MSIX package under %programfiles%\WindowsApps, which is exactly what a corrupted-package failure needs.

Teams Isn't Updating, but the App Is Current

A large share of "Teams not updating" searches are not about the app version at all. If Settings and more (···) > Settings > About Teams shows a recent build, updating Teams again will not help — the problem is something else that has gone stale.

Profile picture not updating

Your photo lives in your Microsoft 365 profile, not in the Teams app, and it is cached aggressively by Teams and every other app that displays it. A changed picture routinely keeps showing the old one for a while.

Check first whether the change actually saved: open Outlook on the web and look at your photo there. If the new one appears there but not in Teams, it is a caching problem — sign out of Teams and back in, and clear the Teams cache if it persists. If the old photo appears in Outlook too, the change never saved, and some organizations block users from changing their own profile photo by policy.

Status or presence not updating

Presence is derived from your activity and calendar, and it syncs on a delay rather than instantly. Two things trip people up: a status you set manually stays set until you clear it, overriding the automatic one, and a client that has quietly lost its connection keeps showing whatever it last knew. Reset your status to Available (or Reset status) and sign out and back in. Other people's presence being stale is usually the same problem on their end, not yours.

Messages or chat not updating

This is a sync and connectivity symptom, not a version one. Restart Teams properly via the tray icon, check whether the web app at teams.microsoft.com shows the missing messages — if it does, the problem is local to the desktop client and clearing the cache is the fix.

Calendar not updating

The Teams calendar is a view onto your Exchange Online mailbox. If your mailbox is not in Exchange Online — still on-premises, or mid-migration — the Teams calendar cannot populate correctly no matter how current the client is. That one genuinely does need your administrator.

After the Update: Teams Meeting Add-in Missing from Outlook

A common casualty of the move to new Teams: the Teams Meeting button disappears from Outlook. It shows up most often on machines where classic Teams was uninstalled manually rather than being removed by the upgrade.

The add-in is installed by the Teams client, so the general fix is to let Teams reinstall it: quit Outlook, quit Teams from the tray, start Teams, sign in, then start Outlook. Microsoft maintains a dedicated troubleshooting article for the cases where that is not enough — see Teams meeting add-in is missing in Outlook desktop after updating to new Teams.

Clear the Teams Cache

Worth doing for stale content, sign-in oddities, and display problems. Not usually the fix for a failed update — resetting the app is better for that. Expect the first launch afterwards to be slow while the cache rebuilds.

Windows:

1. Right-click the Teams icon on the taskbar and select Quit.

2. Press Win + R, paste the following, and select OK:

   %userprofile%\appdata\local\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams
   

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3. Delete everything in that folder.

4. Restart Teams.

Mac:

1. Quit Teams (⌘Q, or right-click the dock icon and select Quit).

2. Open Terminal from /Applications/Utilities and run both commands:

   rm -rf ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.com.microsoft.teams
   rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.teams2
   

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3. Restart Teams.

Older guides point at %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams — that was the classic Teams cache and no longer exists on a current machine.

Reinstall Teams

When updates fail repeatedly and resetting the app did not hold:

1. Uninstall Teams from Settings → Apps → Installed apps.
2. Download the current installer from aka.ms/getteams.
3. Install and sign in.

Nothing of yours is stored only on the device, so there is no data to back up first. On a managed machine, check with IT before uninstalling — you may not be able to reinstall it yourself.

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