What Microsoft Teams can see at all
- Audio from the meeting
- Participant video, up to four streams at a time in a recording
- Screen-sharing activity, meaning whatever was shared
- Nothing on your device that you have not shared
What a recording captures, and the list of what it does not
Microsoft's recording documentation gives a one-line answer and then an unusually specific set of exclusions. The answer: meeting recordings capture audio, video and screen sharing activity.
The exclusions are worth reading in full because they are rarely guessed correctly. Microsoft says recordings will not capture more than four people's video streams at once, whiteboards and annotations, shared notes, content shared by app, or videos and animations embedded in PowerPoint Live presentations.
And recording is announced. Microsoft states that all meeting participants receive a notification in their Teams desktop, web or mobile app as soon as a meeting recording starts, which means a recorded interview is a recorded interview you know about.
Teams is the call, not the assessment
Teams documents no integrity features. There is no screenshot interval, no webcam anomaly analysis, no lockdown mode and no application blocking anywhere in its meeting product. What it captures is what was shared into the meeting and who was speaking.
In a technical interview that makes Teams the least interesting surface in the room. The coding tool is where the proctoring lives, and if you want to know what an interview can actually see, that is the page to read — CoderPad, HackerRank, CodeSignal and Codility each have one here.
What is recorded, and what is only flagged
An artefact a reviewer can open later is a different thing from an event counted on a report, and both are different from an action the platform simply prevents. Every control Microsoft Teams documents, tagged and sourced:
Screen or window sharing
RecordedOff unless turned onMicrosoft's sharing documentation describes presenting your entire screen or a window, alongside PowerPoint Live, Excel and Whiteboard as separate live-share options.
Microsoft — Share content in Microsoft Teams meetingsRecording contents
RecordedOff unless turned onMicrosoft states that meeting recordings capture audio, video and screen sharing activity.
Microsoft — Record a meeting in Microsoft TeamsRecording notification
RecordedOff unless turned onMicrosoft states that all meeting participants receive a notification in their Teams desktop, web or mobile app as soon as a meeting recording starts.
Microsoft — Record a meeting in Microsoft TeamsPresenter toolbar stays private
BlockedAlways onMicrosoft notes that the presenter toolbar is only visible to the person presenting, so the controls you use while sharing are not part of what others see.
Microsoft — Share content in Microsoft Teams meetings
What Microsoft Teams's documentation does not say
The gaps are as useful as the features, and they are the part nobody else writes down. Where Microsoft Teams states a limit, it is quoted below. Where it is silent, the entry says it is silent — undocumented is not the same as absent, and we are not going to present it as one.
- Microsoft publishes an explicit exclusion list: recordings will not capture more than four people's video streams at once, whiteboards and annotations, shared notes, content shared by app, or videos and animations embedded in PowerPoint Live presentations.
- Recording is never silent. Microsoft says every participant is notified in their Teams app as soon as a recording starts.
- Teams documents no proctoring features — no periodic screenshots, no webcam anomaly detection, no browser lockdown, no application blocking. It is a meeting product.
- Microsoft's sharing page does not spell out a side-by-side comparison of what participants see for a screen share versus a window share. The distinction between the two options is documented; the participant-eye description of each is not.
What candidates get wrong about Microsoft Teams
The first is imagining a Teams recording is a recording of everyone's desktops. It is not. Microsoft's line is audio, video and screen sharing activity — meaning whatever was shared into the meeting, by whoever shared it.
The second is assuming whiteboard work is preserved. It is explicitly on Microsoft's exclusion list, along with annotations, shared notes and content shared by app. If a whiteboard mattered to the interview, it exists only in the interviewer's memory and notes.
The third is worrying about being recorded without knowing. Microsoft says every participant is notified in their Teams app as soon as recording starts.
The fourth, as with every meeting product, is thinking Teams tells you anything about the coding platform in the next window. It does not.
Worth knowing before you sit down
- Sharing a single window is a documented option alongside sharing your entire screen.
- Everyone gets a recording notification in their Teams app the moment recording begins, so you will not be recorded without being told.
- A recording carries at most four video streams at once, which is worth knowing if you are one of several people on a panel.
- Whiteboard content and annotations are not in the recording, so if the interview used a whiteboard, that work does not survive in the tape.
- The presenter toolbar is visible only to you while you present.
- As with Zoom and Meet, none of this changes what a separate coding platform records — that tool has its own rules.
What this means if you use an AI assistant
The mechanism is the same as it is on every meeting product. Share your entire screen and you are sharing a composited image of the desktop; share one window and the scope is that window. Microsoft documents both options, and the covered list below applies the app's capture setting to them and says nothing more.
A Teams recording follows what was shared into the meeting, not what is on a participant's machine. Microsoft's exclusion list — four video streams, no whiteboards, no annotations, no shared notes, no app-shared content, no PowerPoint Live embedded video — is a good reminder that a recording is a product artefact with limits, not a surveillance feed.
The notification is a real constraint on the other side too. Nobody records a Teams interview quietly.
What Stealth Interview documents about itself
- A desktop app for macOS and Windows, not a browser extension.
- Not captured by screen-sharing or meeting software.
- Reads the coding problem from a screenshot and returns a working solution in real time.
- Step-by-step explanations with time and space complexity.
- Live transcription of the interviewer's audio.
- Multiple AI models, driven by keyboard shortcuts.
What Stealth Interview covers on Microsoft Teams
Our side of the record, applied to Microsoft Teams. A covered line is a statement about screen capture, never about detection: it says nothing about what Microsoft Teams, its reviewers or a camera can tell. The second list is the one to read twice.
Covered
Screen and window shares. Share one window and the share is that window. Share your screen, from the Teams app or a browser, and the app's window is set to be excluded from that capture, so it should be left out.
Microsoft — Share content in Microsoft Teams meetingsTeams recordings. Microsoft states a recording captures audio, video and screen-sharing activity: what was shared, not your desktop.
Microsoft — Record a meeting in Microsoft Teams
Not covered
Your camera. Participant video is part of the meeting and of the recording.
The coding platform. A proctored assessment open beside the call follows its own rules, whatever Teams shares.
Untested setups. We haven't tested every Teams client, browser and OS version, so don't treat any one setup as confirmed.
Microsoft Teams proctoring: common questions
What does a Microsoft Teams recording capture?
Microsoft states that meeting recordings capture audio, video and screen sharing activity — that is, whatever was shared into the meeting, plus participant video and the meeting audio.
What does a Teams recording not capture?
Microsoft lists the exclusions: more than four people's video streams at once, whiteboards and annotations, shared notes, content shared by app, and videos or animations embedded in PowerPoint Live presentations.
Will I be told if a Teams interview is recorded?
Yes. Microsoft states that all meeting participants receive a notification in their Teams desktop, web or mobile app as soon as a meeting recording starts.
Can I share just one window in Teams?
Yes. Microsoft's sharing documentation describes presenting your entire screen or a window, with PowerPoint Live, Excel and Whiteboard offered separately as document-level live shares.
Can a Teams host see my screen without me sharing?
Microsoft's documentation describes sharing as something the presenter initiates, and a recording as capturing screen sharing activity. There is no documented mechanism in the Teams meeting product for viewing a participant's screen that they have not shared.
Does Microsoft Teams have proctoring features?
No. Teams documents no screenshot capture, webcam anomaly detection, browser lockdown or application blocking. Proctoring belongs to assessment platforms such as HackerRank, CodeSignal and Codility, which run alongside the call.
Sources
Every page below is published by Microsoft Teams or its parent company. Last checked in August 2026; vendors change these features often, so check the date on the page you land on.
- Microsoft — Share content in Microsoft Teams meetingssupport.microsoft.com
- Microsoft — Record a meeting in Microsoft Teamssupport.microsoft.com
Product home: Microsoft Teams