Skype is getting its biggest update in a long time, getting rid its light-blue theme for a new, customizable interface and features aimed at the way young people communicate, featuring emojis to a Snapchat-like recap of the day, reads a new press release from the company.
According to the release, the update is modernizing Skype‘s UI in an apparent effort to provide the reliability the application needs in a market flooded with social media and small upstarts in the communications software world.
“Rebuilt from the ground up, the new Skype vastly improves the ways you can connect with your favorite people and, of course, chatting is front and center,” reads the release. “We’ve made group chats more lively, expressive, and—most importantly—personalized, so you can chat the way you want.”
“With the new Skype, you’ll have countless ways to share life’s moments together, every day. Wherever life takes you, Skype allows you to seamlessly create, play, share, and do more with the people you care about most,” the release continues.
One of the most noteworthy new tools available in the new update is the Highlights feature, a tool that allows users to share temporary clips of their lives, very much like Snapchat or Instagram. These clips are available to view by users’ Skype contacts for seven days after publication.
The new Skype also includes a simple, swipe-right camera that enables users to add expressions to a photo, such as drawings, stickers, or text, also much like Snapchat.
The newest update of Skype will become available to Android users over the next months, and iOS sometime in July, according to the blog post. A desktop version of the new Skype will become available to users sometime this summer.
