Skype pledges not to suck at cross-device messaging and call syncing

sincity · November 25, 2013

Don't get us wrong, Skype is awesome, but being signed into the Microsoft-owned VoIP and IM client on multiple devices at the same time can be quite frustrating.

You'll often receive constant mobile notifications when typing messages on a PC, it's often difficult to see what you've read and haven't, and when you answer a call, it'll often keep ringing on another device.

Well, avid Skype users you'll be glad to know that the company is already planning to resolve these issues with forthcoming updates that'll improve cross-device syncing through the cloud.

Skype product manager Jeff Kunins told The Verge: "It's not that we've been trying our best to be amazing at chat for 10 year and sucking at it, it's that we've been doing a great job doing what we were born to do and now people want more out of us and we're making the investments to expand and be great at that (mobile) too. We're not there yet, but we will be."

Take it as 'read'

Kunins said versions of the apps are in testing which will only see notifications triggered on the active device, while users will soon be able to tell which messages are new and which have been read on other devices.

He added: "You'll see us very soon begin rolling that out so users get the benefit of cloud history, synced read state across all of your devices."

Of the bug which sees incoming calls continue to ring when they've been answered on other devices, Kunins claimed: "It's one of those that seems like it should be trivial, but it's actually quite hard, especially on some platforms like Windows 8 or on the web."

So there you have it, Skype folks. All of those little bugbears that are diminishing your Skype experience should soon be taken care of.