Sometimes you want to know what a message is about before reading it. In Microsoft Teams, you can preview chat messages and notifications before opening them.  

Preview messages in chat  

Note: Some of the message preview features below are part of the public preview program and might undergo further changes before being released publicly. To get access to this and other upcoming features, switch to Teams public preview.

To keep your list of chats simple, you won’t automatically see message previews.  

Screenshot of messages with no message preview and a time stamp.

However, you can turn them on if you prefer. 

Screenshot of messages with a message preview that also shows the time stamp.

To turn them on, 

  1. From Settings and more Generic Ellipsis button select Settings Settings button.

  2. Select Chats and channels.

  3. Turn on Show message previews for chats and team names for channels.

Note: If you're using multiple accounts, you'll need to choose the same message previews settings for all of your accounts. 

Show time stamps

There’s also the option to Show time stamps. This displays either the day that the message was sent, or the time if the message was sent today.  

Time stamps are separate from message previews. You can choose to show them, but not show a preview of the message. However, you can't show message previews without also showing time stamps.  

Note: If you are using a screen reader, you'll need to turn on message preview to hear the preview.  

Preview messages in notifications 

You can also show message and content previews in your notifications.  

  1. From Settings and more Generic Ellipsis button  then select Settings Settings button​​​​​​​.

  2. Select Notifications and activity.

  3. Under Display, select Show message and content previews in notifications.

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