In July, Microsoft announced plans to end support for the “classic” Skype client in September. But those plans were put on hold after the Skype community complained that the new, modern client was missing some beloved features from the classic client.
With plans now in place to reinstate those missing features, Microsoft has resurrected plans to deprecate the old Skype client.
The deprecation comes as Microsoft is consolidating its Skype development on a single client that’s used across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and even the Web. The new client, version 8, has been under development since 2016 and is where Microsoft is performing all new development work, including the recent call recording and end-to-end encryption features.
The introduction of these features means that the old client (a traditional Win32 application) is being left behind. Microsoft doesn’t want to update that client—one of the big points of the new client is that it’s the same on all platforms, greatly reducing the amount of development work needed to add new features. And in the future, Microsoft might want to change the Skype network protocols in a way that prevents the old client from working entirely.
