Teams meeting reminders on Mac
Why the banner gets missed, what to check, and a full-screen alert with one-click Join.
A Teams meeting reminder on a Mac is a banner from macOS. If you are in another call, sharing your screen, in a Focus, or looking at a second display, it comes and goes without you seeing it, and the meeting starts without you.
Why Teams reminders get missed on Mac
Check these in order:
- macOS blocks Teams. In System Settings, Notifications, select Microsoft Teams and turn on Allow notifications. Set the style to Persistent (Alerts on older macOS) so the banner stays until you close it.
- A Focus is on. Do Not Disturb, Work or a scheduled Focus silences Teams unless Teams is allowed in that Focus.
- Teams has notifications off. In Teams, open Settings, then Notifications and activity, and check that meeting notifications are enabled.
- The reminder comes from your calendar. A scheduled Teams meeting is an event in your Outlook calendar, so its reminder follows your Outlook and macOS settings. If that is where it fails, see Outlook for Mac reminders not popping up.
Make it impossible to miss
Even with every setting right, the result is a banner in the corner of one screen. Slapss lives in the menu bar and puts a full-screen alert over everything when the meeting begins, on every display if you want, with a Join button for the Teams link. You can have it appear at the start or anywhere from 10 seconds to 15 minutes before, so there is time to wrap up.
Set it up in a minute
1
Install Slapss from the Mac App Store and allow calendar access when it asks.
2
Connect your work calendar: sign in with Microsoft 365 in Settings, Calendars, or add your Exchange account in System Settings, Internet Accounts.
3
Pick which calendars should alert you. Done.
Your calendar is read on your Mac and never passes through a server of ours.
One-click Join, straight into the Teams app
Slapss finds the Teams link in the event's location, notes or body. The Join button opens it in the Teams app, and falls back to the browser if Teams is not installed. Links wrapped by Microsoft Safe Links, Proofpoint or Barracuda are unwrapped on your Mac, without a network request. Meetings on other platforms get the same button for Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, Whereby, Around and Yandex Telemost.
What else you get
- The next meeting and a live countdown in the menu bar.
- Snooze for 1, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, 1 hour, or until the meeting ends.
- Back-to-back meetings wait in line and show one after the other.
- Optionally skip the alert for invitations you have not accepted, or for titles like "Lunch" or "Focus time".
- Presenting Now holds alerts while you share your screen.
Get Slapss free on the Mac App Store
Questions
Why am I not getting Teams meeting reminders on my Mac?
The usual causes are Teams blocked in System Settings, Notifications, a Focus mode that silences it, Teams notifications turned off in Teams itself, or a meeting that is not on the calendar you are looking at. A scheduled Teams meeting is an event in your Outlook calendar, so Outlook's reminder settings apply too.
Does the Join button open the Teams app?
Yes. Teams links are opened in the Teams app on your Mac. If the app is not installed, the link opens in your browser instead.
Does it work with Teams meetings on my work account?
Yes. Sign in with Microsoft 365 inside Slapss, or add your Exchange account to macOS in System Settings, Internet Accounts. Either way the Teams link in the invitation is picked up automatically.
Will the alert interrupt me while I am sharing my screen?
Not if you turn on Presenting Now. It holds alerts until you are done presenting.
Is Slapss free?
Yes. No subscription, no in-app purchase, no limit. Slapss is open source under the Apache 2.0 license.