What's new in Skype 5.1 Beta
Apr 6, 2017
- Updated to Electron 1.6.2
- Improved installer scripts that register the Skype update repository for you
- Many smaller improvements and bugfixes
New in Skype 5.0 Beta (Mar 2, 2017)
- Calling updates: Calls to mobiles and landlines with Skype credit, one-to-one video calls can be made from Linux to Skype users the latest versions of Skype for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac.
- Better collaboration: Linux users can now view shared screens from other Skype desktop clients (Windows 7.33 and above, Mac 7.46 and above).
- Usability improvements: Unity launcher now shows the number of unread conversations, online contacts in contact list now include Away and Do Not Disturb statuses.
New in Skype 1.16 Alpha (Jan 22, 2017)
- Updated to Electron 1.4.14
- Use keyboard Alt-key based menu shortcuts (where possible)
New in Skype 1.15 Alpha (Jan 15, 2017)
- Updated to Electron 1.4.10
- Enabled context menu with copy/paste commands in the message input area
- Added the option to autostart (Tools->Launch at Login)
- Added the option to launch minimized (Tools->Launch Minimized)
- Many smaller improvements and bugfixes
New in Skype 1.13 Alpha (Nov 28, 2016)
- Enabled SMS sending
- Update to Electron 1.4.7
- Support for remote escalation of the 1-1 call to group call
- Improved crash reporting
- Added support for authentication token revocation
- Bugfixes and performance improvements
New in Skype 1.12 Alpha (Nov 14, 2016)
- Improved authentication process (Switch to Microsoft Account)
- Enabled Hostless group calling - the group call can now continue when host leaves
- Bugfixes and performance improvements
New in Skype 1.10 Alpha (Oct 11, 2016)
- The team has been working hard on bringing video calls on Linux and today we have the experimental version ready for you. We are not quite there. The 1-on-1 video calls work only between Skype for Linux Alpha clients for now. Despite the early phase, we'd like to ask you, the Linux community, to help us with testing. Please let us know how the video works for you. With this release, we also decided to disable some older version of Skype for Linux Alpha (1.1 - 1.6). Those users will be asked to update to latest version.
New in Skype 1.9 Alpha (Sep 29, 2016)
- Added the ability to mute notifications from specific conversation
- Added dark theme support (Settings->Personalisation->Dark theme)
- Added the option to disable emoticons completely
- Added support for /me command
- Added support for system HTTPS proxy
- Improved message quoting - now works even with Ctrl+C
- Hovering message time reveals the full date/time as a tooltip
- Electron update to 1.3.6
- Logger performance and security fixes
New in Skype 1.8 Alpha (Sep 15, 2016)
- Added the option to mark all unread messages as read
- Fixed installation issues and repository setup on Debian based distributions
- Search supports non-latin characters
- Several under-the-hood stability improvements
New in Skype 1.6 Alpha (Sep 5, 2016)
- Added the ability to paste files from clipboard
- Added settings for emoticons (Under the Messaging section of Settings)
- Fixed message quoting
- Added the option to unpin Favorites from Recent conversations
- Names of group chats aren't automatically converted to lowercase after editing
- Several under-the-hood stability improvements
New in Skype 1.5 Alpha (Aug 13, 2016)
- Voice messaging audio now works.
- Mojis now work with audio.
- You can now silence notification sounds and turn off messaging notifications completely in ‘Settings’.
- We’ve disabled the ability to drag & drop a URL into Skype which opens the browser in the application.
- Presence status icon sizes in the Tray have been improved on some distributions.
New in Skype 1.3 Alpha (Jul 28, 2016)
- Instead of being hidden, the menu items are now disabled when you’re not signed in.
- Logout from the menu works consistently now.
- Fixed the post-install script on all supported distributions.
- Fixed the ‘minimize to tray’ function for Cinnamon.
- URL links that are sent in a chat now open with the browser.
- Fixed the Redo shortcut for Linux (CTRL-Y).
New in Skype 4.2.0.37 (Jun 18, 2014)
- An updated UI
- Our new cloud-based Group Chat experience
- More reliable file transfer support when using multiple devices at once
- Greater accessibility by blind and visually impaired users
- PulseAudio 3.0 and 4.0 support
- Lot of bug fixes
New in Skype 4.2.0.13 (Jan 29, 2014)
- Added workaround for PulseAudio 3.x and 4.x audio noise
- Fixed rare crash when opening a chat due to a non existent emoticon
- Fixed crash on Ubuntu/Debian 64-bit due to missing libasound2-plugins:i386 dependency
- Fixed some dialpad's numbers did not work properly
New in Skype 4.2.0.11 (May 21, 2013)
- Feature: When opening account’s links open your logged-in account.
- Feature: Add subscription status and link to the account brief view in the main window.
- Feature: Add a button to enable voice message from the options dialog.
- Feature: When sharing the screen in a multiple monitor setup, share the one where the call window is at the moment.
- Feature: Add Messenger predefined group when logged-in with your MSA account.
- Improvement Create an entry point to hold a conference call from the conversations view.
- Improvement New sizes for the Skype icon.
- Bugfix: Artifacts in the contact list after changing topic or picture in a multichat.
- Bugfix: Searching in the chat window when ‘Ignore poster names’ is set might lead to client crash.
- Bugfix: Skype crashes on attempting to stop sharing selection being in a call on hold.
- Bugfix: Disabling Birthday notification doesn’t work.
- Bugfix: Clicking on certain contact request notifications lead always to the wrong contact request against ‘live’ contact.
- Bugfix: Hide screen sharing window when call paused.
- Bugfix: Link bounding rectangle mismatch in chat when font is smaller than an emoticon present on the same line.
- Bugfix: Double click on a PSTN contact should follow preferred action and not always call.
- Bugfix: Do not pollute the Clipboard with quoted text when quoting a chat message.
- Bugfix: Do not show call on hold for conversations that cannot be put on hold (I.e: echo123).
- Bugfix: Call hold overlay icon goes away giving the idea the call is resumed when is not.
- Bugfix: Show mute indicator at the bottom even when muting from the keyboard shortcut.
- Bugfix: Do not show the login window if autologin plus start Skype minimized are enabled.
- Bugfix: Mark the birthday “read” when seen in the chat.
- Bugfix: Do not allow more than 256-length conversation’s topic.
- Bugfix: Localize all the prices in the Skype WiFi dialogs.
New in Skype 4.1 (Nov 15, 2012)
- Easier conversations
- Talk to your Windows Live Messenger friends on Skype
New in Skype 4.0.0.8 (Jul 18, 2012)
- A serious security issue has been fixed which caused IM messages last entered or sent prior to a crash to be sent to a different IM contact.
- Saving of sent files to hard disks formatted with FAT32 is again possible.
- A crash when marking all conversations as viewed has been fixed.
- Participants appearing and disappearing from call view has been fixed.
New in Skype 4.0 (Jun 14, 2012)
- First off, we'd like to thank our Skype for Linux users for your patience awaiting Skype 4.0 for Linux, codenamed 'Four Rooms for Improvement,' which is now available. With this release, we have finally filled the gap with our other desktop clients and we are now making many of the latest Skype features, as well as a lot of UI improvements, available to our penguin lovers.
- You will find four major changes in this release:
- We have a new Conversations View where users can easily track all of their chats in a unified window. Those users who prefer the old view can disable this in the Chat options;
- We have a brand new Call View;
- Call quality has never been better thanks to several investments we made in improving audio quality; and
- We've worked on improving video call quality and have also extended support for more cameras.
- Of course, we have loads of other small improvements and fixes. As you can imagine, the list is so long it would take too much time to write it all, but some are worthy of mention:
- improved chat synchronization
- new presence and emoticon icons
- the ability to store and view phone numbers in a Skype contact's profile
- much lower chance Skype for Linux will crash or freeze
- chat history loading is now much faster
- support for two new languages: Czech (flag:cz) and Norwegian (flag:no)
- Note, the very first time you start Skype for Linux 4.0 might take a few minutes (depending on how lengthy your chat history is). Please do not close Skype during this time. Subsequent starts will load much more quickly.
New in Skype 2.2.0.99 Beta (May 14, 2012)
- This release updates the libpng library, which is part of our static package, to a newer version to rectify a security issue in the libpng.
New in Skype 2.2.0.35 Beta (Jun 7, 2011)
- General:
- Skype crashed on startup for users who were affected by Skype issue on 26.05.2011
- Video calling:
- Reduced video calls CPU usage
New in Skype 2.1.0.81 Beta 2 (Jan 21, 2010)
- New features:
- Screen sharing.
- Report abuse.
- Support for UI styles.
- Possibility to quote a message.
- Localized time formats.
- Improvements:
- Instant Messaging performance improvements.
- Possibility to add more email addresses to profile.
- Load all historical group conversations into event history.
- PulseAudio: Possibility to choose different audio device for ringing and notifications.
- A message is displayed when the user tries to add contacts that already are his/her buddies.
- Incoming contact request dialog.
- Bugs fixed:
- Crashes when an Instant Message is out of order.
- Skype crashed after turning on animated emoticons.
- Pressing F6 at login screen makes Skype to crash.
- Skype crashes when trying to send a SMS to some invalid numbers.
- Skype crashes when clicking on an invalid Skype Name link, ie. "22".
- Skype crashes when using cancel button in "add SMS Members" window and then pushing "Add" again.
- Crashes when clicking on popup event after logged out from Skype.
- Crashes when calling conference call with auto send video and privacy set to "nobody".
- Using "CLEAR CALLHISTORY ALL" API call will cause a crash.
- HTML injections on profile's Home Page.
- Local time timezone has no longer an invalid value.
- s/old/new/ command is not escaped.
- Editing a message will not change the timestamp of the message. The edited timestamp is displayed in the tooltip of the pencil icon.
- A group conversation stays bookmarked when left.
- Misordered day dividers are handled properly.
- Instant Message search settings are not working and saved.
- Day separator in conversations was not behaving well.
- In some cases the Instant Message disappears until the next IM arrives.
- Wrong message displayed when adding a group conversation picture.
- Do not select all text when editing a message.
- Newly bookmarked conversation now work well with quickfilter.
- Bookmarked IM's don't appear in contact list if done via history for never opened IM's.
- With QT 4.5.x contact groups get collapsed after a while.
- Option dialog resizes to fit the text.
- Voicemail recording/resetting works better.
- Selecting second camera to won't work unless Apply is clicked.
- Under SMS options the "My mobile phone number.." is always greyed out.
- Escape key now exits fullscreen on a video call and when testing video in Video options.
- Escape key doesn't close "options" window.
- No ringing sound on default Alsa device.
- PulseAudio: AGC works better and does not put volume to 0.
- PulseAudio: Sounds cut-off at the end and perhaps PA sound stuttering.
- SMS character counter do not work correctly when adding emoticons.
- Minor improvements for displaying error message when searching/adding existed contacts.
- Add a Skype Contact window grows when switching back from Add a Phone Number Contact.
- API: OPEN IM sends message instead of adding it to input area.
- Calling without enough credit shows as a dropped call.
- Close change password dialog when pressing escape.
- Declining multiple file sendings doesn't work.
- Localization:
- New in bundled languages:
- Ukrainian - Oleh Nykyforchyn.
- Back in bundled languages:
- European Portuguese - Francisco Miguel Ferreira
- Spanish
- Japanese
- Korean
- Latvian
- Simplified Chinese
- Traditional Chinese
- Thai
- Updated languages:
- Bulgarian - Nikolay Filipov & Nikolina Filipova
- German - Claudius Henrichs
- Estonian - Marit Mesipuu
- French - Cédric Lamouche
- Italian - Marco Cimmino
- Lithuanian - Viktoras Kriukovas
- Polish - Karol Szastok
- Brazilian Portuguese - Fabio Roselet
- Romanian - Péter Henning & Mónika Iancu
- Russian - Pavel Shevchuk
- Turkish - Ömer Emin Dede.
- Countries and languages were not correctly translated under Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Chinese Simplified and Traditional.
New in Skype 2.1 Beta (Aug 29, 2009)
- High Quality Video support.
- Skype's SILK audio codec.
- PulseAudio support.
- SMS sending support.
- Chat messages editing/removing support.
- Contact groups support.
- Typing notification in chat.
- Chat picture support (add/change/remove) for group conversations.
- Mood messages are visible in contact list and tooltip.
- Video/Mobile icons are visible in contact list.
- Bookmarked Chats are visible in contact list.
- Contact labels/tags.