Skype Gets New Features And Design Updates

Despite the great success of Microsoft Teams, the Redmond company will continue to invest in their Skype Messenger in the future. A blog post now discusses new features and design upgrades that Skype will receive in the near future and in connection with Windows 11.

“Fast, playful, enchanting and as soft as butter” is how Microsoft describes the future of Skype. And that although the in-house competitor Teams of the platform has overtaken the platform in the last few months. The focus is primarily on a modernized design of the so-called “Call Stage”, the grid view for video calls. All participants in a video conference are now brought into focus, even their own webcam and, with the appropriate settings, users without active image transmission.

Improved performance, many new design elements

The new design, including a larger display area for video participants, should not have a negative impact on the performance of Skype. On the contrary: Microsoft promises in “important scenarios” a performance increase of 20 percent on desktop PCs and over 2000 percent on devices with the Google Android operating system. Other visual changes include revised chat headers, group avatars, a streamlined sidebar, new icon sets and customizable chat colors.

Furthermore, Microsoft is concentrating on the “Meet Now” function of Skype, which enables invitations to audio and video conferences to be sent via link without all participants having to have a Skype account. The structure of the Meet Now lobbies will also be simplified in the course of the redesign. In addition, support for all popular browsers is generally added for Skype, including Safari under Apple macOS. The Office Lens feature for scanning documents on mobile devices has also been improved.

Finally, the “TwinCam” function is added. With it, Microsoft offers the possibility in Skype to add the smartphone as a second camera via QR code. In this way, video conferences can be expanded to include additional mobile recordings apart from the classic webcam.

When exactly all the new features will be available, the Redmond-based company has not yet announced. However, Windows 11 launch on October 5th would be a good time.