Microsoft to Give Skype a Complete Design Makeover

Microsoft has announced plans to give Skype a major makeover and is testing initial plans to make the software faster, reliable and modern-looking. The company has been collecting feedback and carefully analyzing plans to roll out changes to Skype in the coming months.

The calling stage of Skype which is also the most important feature will undergo a design-change to fit light and dark themes. Users can see everyone connected to a call whether they have enabled video or not. This means all call participants will be displayed in a grid format along with the users own window for conferencing.

In addition to this, Microsoft will be bringing in more new themes and layouts with options to customize the main interface for calling. Users will now have the option to choose from speaker view, large gallery, together mode, grid view and more. The new colorful themes will come with button gradients and redesigned panel for mobile users.

Apart from visual design differences, the new version of Skype will come with enhanced performance abilities to support a range of browsers. Skype team said, “We believe the Skype experience should be seamless, accessible, and reliable no matter what browser or device you are using, so we are adding support for all browsers. We would like to make sure that no matter which device, platform, or browser you are using, Skype will always give you a great experience.”

Microsoft previously made Snapchat-like changes to Skype in 2017 and then in 2018 redesigned the software once again to suit more desktop users. In recent times, the company has moved towards Microsoft Teams to give users a zoom experience and to leverage users and free all-day video calling.