Screen annotations appear misaligned for presenter during screen sharing in Microsoft Teams

Question

Screen annotations appear misaligned for presenter during screen sharing in Microsoft Teams

Vinod Rane 5

When I share my screen in Microsoft Teams and ask participants to annotate the screen using a smile emoji near their names, the participants can place the emoji correctly and see it clearly on their side.

However, as the presenter/screen sharer, I see all the emoji annotations grouped or appearing at the right corner of the screen instead of the actual locations where participants placed them. This makes it difficult for me to understand where participants are annotating in real time.

This issue occurs only for the presenter view; attendees see the annotations correctly positioned. Please let me know if this is a known limitation, a synchronization issue, or a bug, and if there is a recommended fix or workaround.

Teams version: 26032.605
OS: Mac M3 pro (Sequoia 15.7.3)

0 comments

1 answer

Your answer

Answer 1

Daniel-Vo 5,010 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Dear Vinod Rane,

Thank you for posting your question on the Microsoft Q&A forum.

Based on your description, when you share your screen in Teams, participants can place emoji annotations and see them correctly positioned on their view. However, as the presenter, you see all annotations grouped in one corner rather than in their actual locations.

To better understand the situation, could you please provide a screenshot showing the issue? Additionally, please confirm whether this occurs in Teams Web, Classic Teams, or New Teams.

In the meantime, you may try the following steps to see if the issue improves:

1/ Check for updates

Ensure you are running the latest version of Microsoft Teams.

2/ Check display scaling and screen resolution

If your Windows display scaling is set to 125%, 150%, or higher, Teams may miscalculate annotation coordinates.

Go to Windows Settings >System > Display
Set Scale to 100% (recommended)
Restart Teams and test again

Additionally, a high screen resolution such as 3840 × 2400 may cause annotation positioning issues. Please try lowering the resolution to:

1920 × 1200
1920 × 1080

3/ Test different Teams versions

There might be rendering inconsistencies between:

Classic Teams
New Teams
Teams Web (browser version)

Please try:

Sharing your screen using Teams Web (Edge or Chrome)
Switching between Classic Teams and New Teams (if available)

4/ GPU Hardware Acceleration

Sometimes annotation layers render incorrectly due to GPU acceleration.

In Classic Teams:

Click your profile picture (top right) > Settings >Select General
Under Application, check Disable GPU hardware acceleration
Restart Teams

In New Teams: The GPU toggle option is not currently available in the settings. However, some users have reported success using the following workaround:

Exit Teams completely
Navigate to:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\

(Example: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json)

Open desktop-config.json
Locate the section:

"appPreferenceSettings": { ..., "disableGpu": false, ... }

Change it to: "disableGpu": true
If the property does not exist, you may add "disableGpu": true inside the appPreferenceSettings block.
Save the file and restart Teams.

If the issue persists, you may consider:

Using the laser pointer tool instead of emoji annotations
Using the built-in Whiteboard feature for collaborative annotation
Sharing a specific window instead of your entire screen, ensuring display scale is set to 100% during screen sharing

I hope the information above is helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out.

If you have additional questions regarding this response, kindly click “Comment.”

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Daniel-Vo 5,010 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-02-27T14:57:12.1766667+00:00

Dear Vinod Rane,

Just reaching out to check if the information shared was helpful. If you have any updates or require further assistance, please feel free to let us know. Warm thanks.
Vinod Rane 5 Reputation points

2026-03-04T09:50:39.1266667+00:00

Thanks Daniel. Can you please share the instructions suitable for mac?
I can confirm that I am currently on latest version of teams.

Teams version: 26032.605
OS: Mac M3 pro (Sequoia 15.7.3)
Daniel-Vo 5,010 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-04T16:30:44+00:00
Dear Vinod Rane,

Thank you for your response.

For macOS, you can refer to these steps below:

1/ Check Display Scaling

Open Display Settings

Click the Apple menu

Select System Settings

Click Displays

2/ Check Resolution Mode

Under your display, you will see either: Default (Recommended), or Scaled

If Scaled is selected:

Try switching to Default first.

If you are already using Default, select Scaled and choose a resolution that is not the highest “More Space” option.

After making changes, please restart Microsoft Teams and test screen sharing again.

3/ Disable GPU Hardware Acceleration

As mentioned earlier, the New Teams app does not include a built-in setting to enable or disable GPU hardware acceleration. You will need to do it through the terminal.

Open the Terminal application on your Mac.

Run the following command to set the disableGpu flag in Teams: defaults write com.microsoft.teams disableGpu -bool true

After running the command, restart Microsoft Teams for the changes to take effect.

To verify, Run command: defaults read com.microsoft.teams disableGpu.

If the command returns 1, it means the GPU is disabled. If it returns 0 or nothing, the setting has not been applied.

In addition, please test different team versions as previously mentioned.

I hope the information above is helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out.
Information Tech 0 Reputation points

2026-03-05T19:56:41.0766667+00:00

I'm in the same boat, a user at our org has started seeing this misaligned annotation. Annotated items appear slightly down and to the right of where presenter actually circles items.

-User is on the latest New Teams version, and doesn't have custom scaling or resolution settings (100% scale and 1920x1080 res). Using 27" monitors while the users he annotates with are mostly on 24" monitors.

-'Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling' is enabled in Settings, but Teams is not on/addable in the list of applicable apps. We have yet to try disabling this.

-Couldn't get annotation to work/replicate in Teams Web.

-That 'desktop-config.json' file is not present on user's machine, but also the Teams app doesn't seem to be a 'full install'? e.g. can't open file location of it and doesn't show up in Control Panel > Programs & Features

We found a temp workaround measure by sharing the individual window, instead of the whole screen, but user doesn't want that as a permanent solution.

Any thoughts?
Daniel-Vo 5,010 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-09T03:52:46.5766667+00:00

Hi,

Because the issue relates to backend, I recommend who have the same issue, can create a support ticket on Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Besides that, you can post your concern in Microsoft Feedback portal. Thank you.
Vinod Rane 5 Reputation points

2026-03-09T09:49:43.87+00:00

Hi Daniel-Vo, I followed the instructions on my Mac, but I’m still having the issue. It looks like there may be a problem with MS Teams.
Daniel-Vo 5,010 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-09T15:18:49.2766667+00:00

Hi Vinod Rane,

If your account is created from organization with business subscription, I recommend you contact your IT to create support ticket - it will have back-end engineer to check. If you are a personal, please report a problem in three dots next to your avatar in Teams > Feedback > Report a problem.

Share via

Screen annotations appear misaligned for presenter during screen sharing in Microsoft Teams

1 answer

Your answer