Hide Inactive Channels in Microsoft Teams

When you’re a member of multiple channels, Teams can quickly become cluttered. To help you stay organized, you can hide channels you haven’t used in a while. You can also let us hide them for you automatically. Either way, they won't show up on your channel list, making it easier to find what you need. If you change your mind, visit or unhide those channels at any time.     

Manage the channel list yourself by turning off automatic hiding. Then, hide inactive channels as needed in Microsoft Teams settings.

Notes: 

  • As soon as you're able to manually hide channels, you'll also be able to set your automated hiding preferences in settings. Then, based on your settings, we'll start hiding channels automatically in a few weeks.

  • You must have more than 25 shown channels for us to automatically hide inactive ones.

Turn off automatic hiding  

To disable automatic hiding: 

  1. Select Settings and more Generic Ellipsis button > Settings Settings button

  2. Turn off the Hide inactive channels switch. 

Screenshot of a blue toggle switch with a white inner circle set to on next to text that reads "Hide inactive channels."

Hide inactive channels as needed  

To manually hide channels:  

  1. Select Settings and more Generic Ellipsis button > Settings Settings button​​​​​​​

  2. Under the Hide inactive channels switch, select Hide now to clean up your channel.

Screenshot of the hide now option in settings. It's used to hide inactive channels as needed.

We’ll then show you any channels you haven’t been active in for a while. You can choose which channels to hide or leave on your channel list.  

Note: You can manually hide channels once every 24 hours. 

Review automatically hidden channels

Once a channel is hidden, we’ll let you know. You can accept the changes by selecting Got it.  

Screenshot of the option to accept or change which channels are hidden.

To decide which channels stay hidden and which should show, select View changes.  Then, select the channels you’d like hidden.  

A screenshot of a channel selection interface. It has a list of channels, checkboxes to select them, and a warning about muted notifications. Select channels to hide them.

Finally, select Hide selected to confirm which channels you want to hide.  

Notes: 

  • We'll hide channels that you haven't read or posted in, or have been personally mentioned in over the last 120 days. This time period is subject to change.

  • If every channel on a team has been hidden, the team will be hidden as well.

Unhide channels 

You can also unhide channels you’ve hidden but would now like to see. 

To move a hidden channel to your list of visible channels: 

  • Select See all channels > Hidden

  • Hover over the channel name to select Show

A screenshot of the hidden American Design awards channel in the Design channels team. It has a red square representing how to show the channel in the channel list.

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Related topics

Customize channel notifications in Microsoft Teams

Reorder the teams list in Microsoft Teams

Show, hide, or pin a team or channel in Microsoft Teams

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