Article
Why Teams shows you as Away after 5 minutes
You're at your desk, reading a contract with a pen in your hand. Five minutes later your dot has gone yellow. This page explains why that happens and what you can do about it.
Where the yellow dot comes from
Teams has no idea what you're doing at your desk. All it can see is whether your keyboard and mouse have been used recently. When your computer goes about five minutes without a keystroke or a pointer movement, Teams decides you've stepped away and flips your dot from green to yellow. Locking your screen (or letting the computer go to sleep) flips it immediately.
That rule works well enough if your whole job happens in windows and tabs. It falls apart the moment your work leaves the screen. Say you print out a forty-page draft and sit down to mark it up. You haven't gone anywhere, but your keyboard hasn't been touched in twenty minutes, so as far as Teams can tell, you have.
What doesn't fix it
- There's no setting for it. Neither you nor your IT department can lengthen the five-minute window. Teams doesn't offer that setting to anyone.
- Setting your status by hand only goes so far. You can pick "Available" manually, but a locked or sleeping computer can still pull the dot back to Away.
- Power settings aren't enough. Stopping your computer from sleeping keeps the screen on, but the five-minute activity rule keeps running anyway. Your screen can be on all afternoon and Teams will still mark you Away.
How to stop Teams marking you Away
A status message
A status message costs nothing. Something like "At my desk working on paper. Message me, I'll see it" tells anyone who checks exactly where you are. The problem is that most people never read it. They glance at the dot and move on.
Keep something on screen that needs you
Joining a meeting or presenting keeps you green, which is why your dot behaves during calls. Not much use for paperwork, though.
Run an app that keeps your activity ticking over
The last option is an app that keeps your computer awake and moves your pointer a tiny amount every few minutes, so Teams keeps seeing activity while you sit there with your pen. That's what Ticking Along does. You turn it on before you start on paper, tell it how long to run, and it stops on its own.
One thing to know
Every fix on this page needs your computer to be awake. A laptop with the lid closed is asleep, and no app can wake it back up for you. So if you're working at your desk, leave the lid open.
If you're on Slack too, the same thing happens there: how to stop Slack marking you Away while you read. And if paper is a regular part of your week, here's the full setup. For the options laid out side by side, see how to keep Teams showing as available.