Why it marks you Away on Teams
A classic remote-work problem: you're at your computer, but your status turns amber. The cause is almost never Teams itself.
Teams reads your system's idle clock
Microsoft Teams doesn't check whether you're looking at its window. It reads the “idle time” the operating system calculates from your last mouse move or key press. When that counter passes a threshold (in practice, around 5 minutes), Teams flips your presence to “Away” automatically.
That's why it marks you away while you read a long document, review code, sit in a call from another app, or simply think. You haven't closed Teams; you've just stopped touching the mouse.
Fixes that fall short
- Manually setting “Available”: Teams overrides it again as soon as it detects inactivity.
- “Keep awake” apps (Caffeine and the like): they stop the device sleeping, but don't reset inactivity, so you still go Away.
- Raising the Windows/Mac lock timeout: helps with sleep, not with Teams presence.
Reset inactivity with real movement
The only reliable way for Teams to see you active is to keep the system idle counter below the threshold. KeepOnDuty generates small, real mouse movements at intervals you control, so the clock resets for Teams — and for Slack, Discord or Zoom — at once. You can schedule it to your work hours only, and it steps aside the moment you touch the mouse.
Frequently asked questions
How often does Teams mark you away?
In practice, after about 5 minutes with no mouse or keyboard activity.
How does Teams know if I'm active?
By the idle time reported by the operating system, not by what happens inside the Teams window.
Start for free
Download it, press Start and forget about being marked away. No account, no cost.
Free and no account · macOS 11+ and Windows 10/11. First time on Mac: right-click → Open.