Microsoft is backtracking on some of the updates it made to its Skype service in June last year, following negative feedback from users. In a blog post, Peter Skillman, director of design for Skype and Outlook, admitted that as Skype had grown beyond its origins of voice-only calling, adding video calling, messaging, group video calling, and a broad range of other features and services, usability had suffered. “This past year we explored some design changes and heard from customers that we overcomplicated some of our core scenarios,” he wrote. “Calling became harder to execute and Highlights didn’t resonate with a majority of users.”

On mobile, the ‘Highlights’ and ‘Capture’ buttons have been removed, with Skillman describing these as: “redundant and underused features that create clutter.” Highlights was often described as a Snapchat-like feature that enabled users to post photos and videso documenting what they had done that day.  Skype users will be able download all the Highlights that they have posted until 30 September, 2018.

Meanwhile on desktop, the buttons for ‘Chats’, ‘Calls’, ‘Contacts’, and ‘Notifications’ have been moved to the top left of the window. The new design is available on the latest Skype version (8.29) for Android, iOS, OS X, Linux, Windows 7, 8 & 8.1 operating systems.