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Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has spent the last year and a half striving to make Teams as good as possible. It’s not the only messaging tool the company has, of course. Skype might not be what you turn to in the age of Meet, Duo, and – yes – FaceTime, but it’s still a very popular tool for communicating with your friends and family online. Microsoft is working hard to modernize the once-dominant video chat app, starting with an all-new overhaul in its latest update.
There’s a lot of new stuff in today’s announcement, but it’s Skype’s call schedule that’s getting the most attention. The app’s main layout – which Microsoft calls the “appeal phase,” apparently – has new layouts and features to help it catch up with the competition. For example, all users are now included in the grid, even though some users have their video turned off. Your own video feed will also appear in the feed, so you can see what you look like next to other members of the call. Together mode and screen sharing also use larger video previews along the top bar, so you can actually see the people on the other side of the call. And with a brand new tool called “TwinCam,” you can pair your smartphone with your call on the fly to add a second camera – and more importantly, portable – to the conversation.
These are all functional changes, but Skype hasn’t forgotten to spruce up its user interface either. This update contains new themes, as well as gradient icons for contacts. Custom notification sounds will finally let you ditch the classic Skype sound library – RIP to those beeps and bloops – and an improved reaction picker makes sending an emoji faster on a call. Even the smallest usability changes, like extending the web client to include all browsers, seem destined to fill years of gaps.
All the visual polish in the world can’t change the slowness of the app since Microsoft first bought it almost ten years ago. This update improves Skype performance in “key scenarios” by 30% on the desktop, which improves the messaging experience overall. When it comes to the mobile app, today’s blog post claims a huge – and almost inconceivable – 2,000% increase in Android. I haven’t used Skype on a phone in years, but this number makes it feel like it’s been a miserable experience.
TwinCam’s second camera screen.
It might appear that Skype was in danger of being discontinued, but today’s news confirms the app is here to stay. All of these features (and more) will be available to users over the next few months, so keep an eye out for your incoming updates.
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