Skype announced a significant redesign on Monday with brighter colors and new features.
The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service promises “an improved, faster, reliable, and super modern-looking Skype” is coming over the next few months, according to the company’s blog post. Skype said the new changes were based on customer feedback and requests.
Perhaps the biggest change is that Skype now supports all browsers, whereas before, you only could use Skype if you had Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Safari, or Opera. Skype also detailed that the latest update would include more color and new themes and layouts to its call stage—you’ll be able to find yourself on the main view during a call since all participants are now visible on the call stage.
Other changes include the ability for audio-only participants to have their own colorful backgrounds, upgraded chat headers, customizable notification sounds, a new reactions chooser, and more.
The platform also announced an improved desktop performance of 30% and over 2,000% if you’re using Skype on an Android device.
While these features will be more broadly available in the coming months, Skype said those who belong to the Skype Insiders Program will get to try them out early.
Skype’s redesign and updates could be the platform trying to stay relevant as other video services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams have taken the lead over the past year or so. According to Okta’s 2021 Businesses at Work Report, Zoom is the top video conferencing app in the workplace and grew over 45% in usership between March and October 2020.
However, with this announcement that Skype will be available on any browser, its daily usership could see an increase over the coming months, especially as remote work continues to increase.
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