You join a Teams meeting, or you're already in one, and something's wrong: the other side can't hear you, can't see you, or both. It's one of the most common calls into any IT helpdesk, and one of the most annoying, because it's usually happening in real time, in front of a client or a room full of colleagues, with no time to read a support article end to end.
The good news is that the causes have a predictable order of likelihood, and most of them are not a Teams problem at all. Teams is usually just the messenger, reporting that something upstream, the operating system, the device, another piece of software, isn't handing over the microphone or camera the way it should. Working through the causes in order, cheapest and quickest first, finds the fix faster than guessing, and it's also the fastest way to work out whether this is something you can fix yourself in under a minute or something that genuinely needs IT.
Start here: the checks you can do yourself
Before touching Teams at all, these checks cover the large majority of 'no audio' and 'no video' problems, and every one of them takes under a minute.
- 1Check the operating system's own privacy permission for the microphone and camera. Windows and macOS both gate access to the microphone and camera at the system level, separately from any app-level setting, and it's a common trap after an operating system update resets or re-prompts for permission. On a Windows 11 machine this generally lives under Settings, in the Privacy & security section; on a Mac it's under System Settings, in Privacy & Security. Confirm Teams, and your browser if you join that way, is listed and switched on.
- 2Check which device Teams itself has selected. Teams keeps its own device selection, separate from whatever the operating system treats as the default, and it doesn't always update automatically when you plug in a new headset or unplug an old one. Open Teams' own settings, from your profile picture menu or the three-dot menu during a call, and look for the Devices section to confirm the correct microphone, speaker and camera are each explicitly selected, not just left on 'default'.
- 3Rule out a headset or Bluetooth handover problem. A Bluetooth headset that's also paired to a nearby phone can silently reconnect to the phone mid-meeting, taking the microphone with it. A wired headset that's come slightly unplugged, or plugged into the wrong port on a laptop with both a combo jack and separate mic and headphone ports, produces the same symptom: it looks connected, and it isn't actually carrying audio.
- 4Check whether another application is already holding the device. Usually only one application can use a camera at a time, and a video call app, a recording tool, or even a browser tab left open from an earlier meeting can hold onto it in the background, quietly blocking Teams from getting access. Closing other conferencing apps and unused browser tabs before joining is a genuinely useful habit, not superstition.
- 5If joining Teams through a browser rather than the desktop app, check the browser's own site permission for the microphone and camera as well. This is a separate permission from the operating system's, sits at the browser level, and is a common source of confusion because the OS permission can be granted while the browser's is still blocked, or the other way around.
Desktop app vs browser: what's actually different
The Teams desktop app and Teams in a browser don't behave identically. The desktop app talks to devices more directly and generally handles Bluetooth and USB headset switching more reliably; the browser version depends on the browser's own media permissions and can behave slightly differently between Chrome, Edge and Safari. If a problem only happens in one and not the other, that's a useful clue rather than a coincidence, and it's worth noting when it's time to ask IT for help, because it usually points straight at the layer that's actually at fault.
Drivers and restarts: the last resort, not the first
Restarting the laptop fixes a genuine share of device problems, because it clears whatever process or driver state got stuck. It's just the least targeted fix on this list, and it's usually offered first because it's easy, not because it's most likely to work. It's worth trying after the checks above, not instead of them. An out of date or corrupted audio or camera driver is a real cause, but on a business laptop managed by IT, updating a driver isn't something a user should be doing manually; it's the point where this becomes an IT ticket rather than a self-service fix.
Fix it yourself, or call IT: where the line actually sits
Most of what causes a Teams audio or video failure sits in the checks above, and all of them are genuinely safe for anyone to try without any IT knowledge. IT involvement earns its keep at a specific point: when the fix requires administrator rights the user doesn't have, when a managed device's security policy is itself the block, when a driver needs updating on a fleet machine, or when the same fault keeps recurring across meetings for no obvious reason, which usually points to a hardware fault worth having looked at properly rather than worked around.
- Self-fixable: operating system privacy permission, Teams device selection, Bluetooth reconnection, another app holding the device, browser site permission
- Needs IT: permission settings greyed out or managed by policy, driver updates on a managed fleet device, a fault that recurs across multiple meetings and devices, anything requiring administrator access