How to Turn Off Copilot in Teams Meetings (and Facilitator)

To turn off Copilot in a Teams meeting, the organizer or a co-organizer opens the meeting from the Teams calendar, selects Options, goes to Copilot and other AI, sets "Allow Copilot and Facilitator" to Off and selects Apply. Off also turns off recording and transcription. If you can’t change it, your organization has set it for you.

Facilitator, the agent that writes AI notes, has its own switch in the same place. Once the meeting has started, an organizer or presenter selects More actions > Turn off Facilitator.

A Teams meeting can carry three Microsoft AI features, plus any third-party bot someone brings along. Each one has its own switch.

Do it before the meeting. You need to be the organizer or a co-organizer: presenters and attendees can’t change meeting options. You don’t need a Copilot license yourself to control Copilot in meetings you organize.

1. In Teams, open your calendar, select the meeting and select Options. Meeting options open in a new window in your default browser.
2. Go to Copilot and other AI.
3. In the "Allow Copilot and Facilitator" dropdown, choose Off.
4. Select Apply.

Off disables Copilot for that meeting, and Microsoft turns off recording and transcription as well, to keep Copilot away from anything sensitive shared in it. Facilitator goes too, because it is only available when Copilot is enabled. One thing stays: Copilot in the meeting chat still works, using only what people type in the chat.

If you don’t see the option at all, Microsoft’s advice is to contact your IT admin.

Because that is Microsoft’s default. Under the default admin policy, "On with saved transcript required", new meetings get During and after the meeting and organizers can’t change it. Microsoft also notes that your organization’s sensitivity labels and meeting templates can limit the choice.

With that value, Copilot only works while the meeting is transcribed. To hold a meeting without it:

• Don’t record or transcribe, and check that "Record and transcribe automatically" is off under Recording & transcription in meeting options. Webinars and town halls switch it on by default.
• With Teams Premium or a Copilot license, set "Who can record and transcribe" to organizers and co-organizers, so no one else can start transcription. "No one" is only allowed when Copilot is set to Off.
• To get the Off choice back, ask your Teams admin for a policy set to On, On with transcript saved by default or Off.

Once the meeting is running, what you can switch off depends on the setting and on your role.

• Copilot on During and after the meeting: stop transcription. Organizers, co-organizers and presenters select More actions, then Recording or Transcribing. Microsoft says either one stops transcription, and Copilot stops with it.
• Copilot on Only during the meeting: Microsoft’s help for this mode says that once Copilot starts, it stays on for the rest of the meeting. Change the setting before the next one.
• The setting itself: the organizer or a co-organizer can open meeting options during the meeting, from Controls > View more options, and choose Off. Microsoft doesn’t say whether that takes effect without restarting the meeting (see below).
• Facilitator: an organizer or presenter using Teams on the web or desktop selects More actions > Turn off Facilitator. Notetaking stops; notes already taken stay.
• Intelligent recap without a transcript: organizers, co-organizers and presenters with a Copilot license select Meeting AI at the top of the meeting window and turn the Intelligent recap toggle off. Everyone gets a banner when it changes, and a summary is only made if the toggle is on when the meeting ends. Before the meeting, the "Start Intelligent Recap when Copilot is turned on" toggle in meeting options decides whether it starts together with Copilot when the meeting begins.

We read these on 7 November 2026. Until Microsoft lines them up, set the options before the meeting.

Facilitator is an AI agent for meetings. It writes real-time AI notes that participants can edit, answers questions in the meeting chat, tracks the agenda and runs timers. Adding it or turning it on needs a Microsoft Copilot license, but everyone in the meeting except external participants sees its notes and chat messages. It can only be added to scheduled meetings, not to channel meetings, instant meetings or Teams calls.

1. Open the meeting from your Teams calendar and select Options.
2. Go to Copilot and other AI and turn the Facilitator toggle off.
3. Select Apply.

Setting "Allow Copilot and Facilitator" to Off removes Facilitator too, but it also turns off Copilot, recording and transcription. For a recurring meeting, Microsoft’s help doesn’t say whether one change covers every occurrence, so open the next one afterwards and check.

1. Select More actions in the meeting controls.
2. Select Turn off Facilitator.

Only organizers and presenters using Teams on the web or desktop can do this. It stops the notetaking but doesn’t remove notes already taken: they are saved as a Loop file in the OneDrive of whoever started Facilitator, in a folder Microsoft names Meetings.

Not much on your own: the switch belongs to the organizer. Here is what each role can do, from Microsoft’s roles table and its Facilitator help:

• Ask before the meeting. If their admin’s policy allows it, the organizer or a co-organizer can set Copilot to Off, or to Only during the meeting, in a minute.
• Know what you will see. With During and after the meeting, everyone sees the notice that the meeting is being transcribed. With Only during the meeting, the Microsoft help pages we read describe no notice to the other participants, and nobody sees what someone else asks Copilot.
• As a guest from another organization, your own Copilot doesn’t work in a meeting hosted outside your organization, and external participants don’t see Facilitator’s notes. You still can’t turn off the host’s AI.
• If you are not comfortable, say so at the start, or leave the meeting.

In the Teams admin center. One thing first: setting the meeting policy to Off only changes the default. In Microsoft’s words, "your organizers can manage this setting on a per-meeting basis."

1. Go to Meetings > Meeting policies and select a policy, or create one.
2. In the Recording & transcription section, find the Copilot setting.
3. Choose On, On with saved transcript required, On with transcript saved by default or Off, and select Save. Then assign the policy to the users or groups it is for.

In PowerShell: Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -Copilot Disabled. Note that Microsoft’s cmdlet reference still lists only Enabled and EnabledWithTranscript for -Copilot, while its Copilot admin page lists all four values (both read 7 November 2026).

• Lock it with a meeting template (Teams Premium). Under Meetings > Meeting templates, add a template, set Allow Copilot and select lock: organizers who schedule with that template can’t change it. A new template can take up to 24 hours to reach users.
• Block Facilitator. It is allowed by default. Under Teams apps > Manage apps, search for Facilitator, select it and choose Block. App permission policies can allow it for some users only.
• Turn off AI-generated notes for everyone. They belong to Loop experiences in Teams and are controlled by the tenant-wide IsCollabMeetingNotesFluidEnabled setting in PowerShell, which can’t be set per user.
• Turn off intelligent recap. Microsoft’s recap page says to run Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -AllowIntelligentRecap $false, which turns recap off in all meetings, but its cmdlet reference marks that setting as not fully released and without effect (both read 7 November 2026).
• License only the people who need it. Copilot in meetings needs an add-on Microsoft Copilot license, and Facilitator comes with that license.
• For the most sensitive meetings, end-to-end encryption removes Copilot, recording, transcription and live captions. The organizer needs Teams Premium and turns on the End-to-end encryption toggle in meeting options; people on the web or dialing in by phone can’t join, and the limit is 200 participants.

The same cmdlet reference also lists a MeetingAI setting whose values include DisabledNoOverride, but marks it as not fully released, with no effect yet. Calls are separate: calling policies control Copilot in 1:1 and group calls, and meeting policies cover scheduled meetings and Meet now. Under Voice > Calling policies, the Copilot setting has On (the default), On with saved transcript required and Off, and Off means "Copilot is off for calls."

Turning Copilot off does nothing to Otter, Fireflies, Read.ai and other bots that join as participants. An organizer, co-organizer or presenter can remove one from the meeting. Admins have a meeting policy for them, "Manage external bots and their access to meetings" in the Meeting join & lobby section: on its default, "When detected, require approval before joining", Teams holds detected bots in the lobby until someone admits them. Microsoft notes that some bots may not be detected. Its cmdlet reference also lists a value that blocks detected bots outright, BlockDetectedBots, which the admin page doesn’t mention (both read 7 November 2026).

If you turned Copilot off to control who processes the meeting, not to go without notes, there is another kind of notetaker: one that records on your own computer instead of joining the call. Reline is one. Its desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux (beta) records your microphone and your computer’s audio (on a Mac, the computer’s audio needs macOS 13 or later), so nothing appears in the Teams participant list. The audio is transcribed and summarized in the cloud, not on your device.

So if your reason is that no AI service may process this meeting, Reline doesn’t meet that bar either. It doesn’t switch off anyone else’s AI, and you still need to tell people you are recording where the law or your company’s policy requires it. If someone else turned Copilot off for their meeting, take that as their answer and ask before you record anything.

• Microsoft Learn, "Manage Microsoft Copilot in Teams meetings and events" (updated 26 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/copilot-teams-transcription
• Microsoft Support, "Catch up on meetings with Microsoft Copilot in Teams": support.microsoft.com/office/0bf9dd3c-96f7-44e2-8bb8-790bedf066b1
• Microsoft Support, "Use Copilot without transcribing or recording a Teams meeting or call": support.microsoft.com/office/a59cb88c-0f6b-4a20-a47a-3a1c9a818bd9
• Microsoft Support, "Meeting options in Microsoft Teams": support.microsoft.com/office/53261366-dbd5-45f9-aae9-a70e6354f88e
• Microsoft Support, "Add co-organizers to a meeting in Microsoft Teams": support.microsoft.com/office/0de2c31c-8207-47ff-ae2a-fc1792d466e2
• Microsoft Support, "Roles in Microsoft Teams meetings": support.microsoft.com/teams/meetings/roles-in-microsoft-teams-meetings
• Microsoft Support, "I can’t record a meeting in Microsoft Teams" and "I can’t transcribe a meeting in Microsoft Teams": support.microsoft.com/office/f35329c2-57b1-487f-b5e3-70a7efb0945b and support.microsoft.com/office/61f4c8e4-f2d1-4aeb-9b20-244c20fc3faa
• Microsoft Support, "Start, stop, and download live transcripts in Microsoft Teams meetings": support.microsoft.com/office/dc1a8f23-2e20-4684-885e-2152e06a4a8b
• Microsoft Support, "Facilitator in Microsoft Teams meetings": support.microsoft.com/office/37657f91-39b5-40eb-9421-45141e3ce9f6
• Microsoft Support, "Frequently asked questions about agents in Microsoft Teams": support.microsoft.com/office/f7317b78-fd53-4cfe-88f0-f0a0751a4150
• Microsoft Learn, "Set up Facilitator in Microsoft Teams" (updated 18 August 2026): learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/facilitator-teams
• Microsoft Support, "Use intelligent recap in Microsoft Teams meetings without transcription": support.microsoft.com/teams/meetings/use-intelligent-recap-microsoft-teams-meetings-without-transcription
• Microsoft Learn, "Intelligent recap in Teams meetings without saving transcripts" (26 October 2026) and "Intelligent recap for Teams calls, meetings, and events": learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams
• Microsoft Learn, "IT admins - Create a custom meeting template in Microsoft Teams": learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/create-custom-meeting-template
• Microsoft Learn, "Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy" (PowerShell reference): learn.microsoft.com/powershell/module/microsoftteams/set-csteamsmeetingpolicy
• Microsoft Learn, "Manage Microsoft Copilot in Teams calls": learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/copilot-teams-calling-transcription
• Microsoft Learn, "Manage end-to-end encryption for Microsoft Teams meetings and one-to-one calls": learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/teams-end-to-end-encryption
• Microsoft Learn, "Manage external bots and their access to meetings hosted in your organization": learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/manage-external-bots