Skype 7.7 for Mac adds web link previews, fixes
Skype today released version 7.7 of its Mac app and with it is rolling out a new web link preview feature that will automatically provide snippets of web content in chats when sharing links.
With web link previews, you no longer need to type the: “check out this funny cat video” alongside the actual link to the cat video. When you send the link in chat, a rich visual preview of the web page is automatically displayed, making it much easier to see what’s been shared. Finding a link in your chat history also becomes quicker, saving precious time to let you focus on the conversation.
The previews will only show up if a link is the only thing in the message, so it won’t break up long blocks of text that happen to include a URL (an annoyance with similar web previews in other chat apps). Skype also notes that it puts “extra focus on optimizing for video and image content, so we encourage you to try links to video, image or even gifs first.”
The update also includes a couple bug fixes:
- Fixed an issue where some users cannot start Skype due to a corrupted index
- Fixed an issue preventing some users from disabling “User XYZ went offline” notification
You can access the feature by downloading the latest version of Skype for Mac, version 7.7, here.