Notification Location

Question

With recent changes to Teams Notifications, my notifications have moved to my main monitor rather than follow the app location. I have 3 monitors and leave my communications apps on my first monitor so that when the notification comes up in the bottom right, it appears next to the start menu on the 2nd monitor (main). The main monitor is the location that all your desktop app icons appear. If I make my 1st monitor my main one, so my notification appears where expected, my icons move. Why can you just make the notification movable and remember its location? Why does it have to be some settings in the app? Also, when I change my main monitor, it moves my outlook notifications which cannot be updated in the app. This is very disruptive to normal workflow.

Answer 1

Teams and Outlook toast/badge notifications on Windows are controlled by the operating system’s notification system and are anchored to the OS-defined “main display,” not to the window location of each app. In multi‑monitor setups, this means:

• Changing the main monitor in Windows moves where all OS‑level notifications (including Teams and Outlook) appear.
• Teams does not currently support freely dragging/moving the notification pop‑ups to an arbitrary monitor and remembering that position.
• Outlook’s desktop alerts behave the same way and also do not expose a per‑monitor location setting.

On macOS, Teams notifications similarly rely on the OS notification system and its rules for where banners appear. Teams guidance explicitly notes that for chats, channels, mentions, and apps, Teams “leverages the macOS notifications system,” and that notifications must be enabled and configured at the OS level first, not per‑app window location.

Because the behavior is owned by the OS notification framework, the current options are limited to:

1. Adjusting which display is set as the main display in the OS (which affects icons and all app notifications together).
2. Adjusting Teams notification behavior (what triggers a notification, sound on/off, etc.) under Settings and more → Settings → Notifications and activity, but not the physical screen position.
3. For macOS, enabling or disabling Teams notifications and banner behavior under System Settings → Notifications → Microsoft Teams.

To request a change such as movable notifications that remember their location, feedback needs to be submitted through the official feedback channels (for example, via in‑product feedback or the public feedback mechanisms referenced in Microsoft support articles). That is the supported path for influencing future design changes.

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References:

• First things to know about notifications in Microsoft Teams
• Manage notifications in Microsoft Teams
• Outlook desktop alert notifications open behind other applications