Remove Mentions and Drafts Message Groups

Hi @Matt M,  

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A forum. 

It is completely understandable how important every pixel of screen real estate is when you are working on a laptop or within a smaller window. Having new UI elements like Mentions and Drafts appear at the top of your list can feel like an unnecessary addition, especially since those notifications are already clearly visible in your Activity feed and chat list. 

I want to be transparent regarding the current state of this feature: this layout is a built-in design choice within the current Teams experience. Because these are persistent system views, unfortunately there is no direct setting available at this time to hide or disable them. 

While we wait for more customization options, here are a way to reorganize your view and keep your focus on your actual conversations: organizing with custom sections: To keep your priority work from being pushed down by system headers, you can create your own sections (such as "Active Projects" or "Priority"). Moving your key chats here ensures they stay grouped and easy to scan. 

Since this is a core design behavior, the most effective way to see a "Hide" option added is to share your experience directly. When users explain how these features overlap with existing tools, such as pointing out that the Activity feed already handles these notifications, it provides the engineering team with the specific insights needed to prioritize a toggle. 

By providing feedback through the Help button in Teams, you are helping the community by advocating for a leaner, more customizable interface. Your input is a vital part of how these tools evolve. You can also share your feedback through the official feedback portal, where you can submit your concerns, feedback, or recommendations so they can be reviewed and considered to develop in the future. Additionally, you can upvote existing feedback if you find an issue similar to yours.

Thanks again for highlighting this. Specifically, usability-focused feedback is exactly what helps improve the experience for everyone. 

Truly appreciate your contribution.

In the new chats and channels experience in Microsoft Teams, the Mentions view is a built‑in quick‑access view that “compiles all personal mentions in one convenient list,” and is exposed alongside other filters and views such as Discover and Copilot. Drafts are similarly surfaced as a dedicated view in the chat list.

Based on the available information, these views can be selected and used as filters, but there is no documented option to remove or hide the Mentions and Drafts entries themselves from the Chat list UI. Filters like Unread, Chats, Channels, Meetings, and Muted can be toggled on and off, but Mentions is described as a persistent view rather than a removable filter, and no setting is documented to disable or hide it (or the Drafts view) in the new experience.

To manage how prominently mentions affect notifications, use notification settings instead (for example, via Settings and more > Settings > Notifications and activity and the Chats and channels / Display options), but this will not remove the Mentions or Drafts entries from the list.

References:

• Use a screen reader to navigate and explore the new chats and channels experience in Microsoft Teams
• Basic tasks using a screen reader in the new chats and channels experience
• First things to know about notifications in Microsoft Teams
• The new chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams
• Keep Your Chats and Channels Simple