How to keep Teams active and your status green

When Teams switches you to Away

On a computer, Teams marks you Away after “a few minutes” without input, or when you lock the computer. Once it goes to sleep, you show as Offline. Microsoft gives no number, and the five minutes everyone quotes comes from users.

On a phone, you’re Away whenever the Teams app is in the background, and Offline after 24 hours without use.

How the Stay green bookmark works

Stay green is a bookmark with one line of code in it. Click it on your Teams tab, and every 10 seconds it tells Teams the mouse moved, so that tab never goes idle.

• It only works in a browser tab. You can’t run it inside the desktop app.
• If you have Teams open in more than one place, it shows whichever status is most available. Available beats Away, so the web tab keeps you green while the desktop app sits idle.
• Click it again whenever the Teams tab reloads. It stops when your computer goes to sleep.

How to keep Teams status green

Teams on the web has a built-in setting that holds your status while you’re active in other tabs and apps.

1. Open Settings, then Notifications and activity, then Presence.
2. Turn on “Keep my current status when I’m active outside of Teams on the web”.
3. When your browser asks, let it detect activity in other tabs and apps.

You can’t lock yourself to Available by hand. Teams only lets you pick a status that’s less available than the one it has worked out from your activity.

Setting Busy for focus time

For focus time, set Busy or Do not disturb by hand. Clear it afterward, because with no duration picked it stays on for a day. If you still answer the first message that comes in, the red dot stops meaning anything.

How to keep Teams active on a laptop

On a laptop, Teams turns you Away the moment the screen locks, and Offline once the laptop sleeps. Give both timers more time in your laptop’s settings so neither cuts in early. Teams still counts its own few minutes without input, and the Stay green bookmark covers those.

If Teams is on your phone too, whichever device you used last sets your status. Read one message on your phone, put the app in the background, and you show as Away.

Out of Office status

Turn on an Outlook auto-reply, such as one of our funny out of office messages, and Teams switches you to Out of Office. A calendar event marked Out of Office does the same. Open Teams from the beach and coworkers see you’re out of office and online at the same time.

What your employer can see

The Teams user activity report in the Microsoft 365 admin center doesn’t show how long you were Away. For each person, over 7, 30, 90 or 180 days, it counts:

• chat messages, channel posts and replies
• meetings organized and attended, and calls
• time on audio, video and screen sharing
• the date you were last active

On a WFH day you’re judged by a green dot that can’t tell a busy person from a jiggler. A fake work screen puts work on your monitor and does nothing for your status. In case your manager opens the door, the Boss Key game drills the flip from Snake to a fake spreadsheet.

Mouse jigglers

A mouse jiggler nudges the pointer so the computer never counts as idle. 31% of US workers have moved their mouse to keep their status online, and 38% of millennials have.

Plug a wall-powered jiggler into a timer set for the end of the day, so your dot goes yellow when everyone else’s does. Simulated keyboard activity got more than a dozen Wells Fargo staff fired in 2024. Faked keystrokes sit at the risky end of our list on how to look busy at work.