I am a professional software developer nostalgic for Skype from my childhood, and I am quite interested in faithfully re-creating old Skype, particularly Windows versions 4.x, 5.x, an 6.x. My idea is to allow different skins/themes to support each of these.
I have experience creating scalable real-time backends, so I’m not concerned about that. In fact, the hardest part right now is re-creating the frontend. These old versions of Skype were deactivated in 2018 and I cannot find a way to get access to them. It is quickly becoming a herculean effort to piece together reference videos from 2011, most of which are extremely low quality.
I’m currently missing, for example, references of all the menu dropdown options, references for all the menus/buttons clicked during calls, references for the system tray, references for the layout of group calls depending on the number of people, among many others.
I’m wondering if anyone here has any of:
Access to a computer which can run Skype versions 4-6 in offline mode
Footage demonstrating Skype features (again for versions 4-6), preferably high quality
Ideas on how to get old Skype versions past the login screen in any way
To be honest, I simply don’t have the time right now to crawl through youtube/google search and piece together all the references. However, if someone can get me solid references I could probably get a prototype version out rather quickly. So if you’re interested in seeing old Skype come back, here is your opportunity
In the meantime, I will continue keeping a list of references I know of at this link.
Hello, Idk if ur still working on this but I used to do a lot of looking into for the older skype clients about a year ago so I’ll provide some references for you to use.
If you open an older release of Skype (all versions pre-electron except for 4.x work with this) you can use process hacker, select “Skype” right click it and enter the “Miscellaneous” section and then choose the “Windows” option and find the “tSkMainForma” section and Right click it and select “Visible” and do the same for everything under that category It will get you past the login screen and a blank session of Skype will appear that should help with context menus and accuracy and such.
Heres some videos from the old skype channel that show off some functions:
So I was able to get a dump of all assets for Skype 5. This includes all emojis (including pencil writing/break/erase), loading icons, backgrounds, UI elements, you name it and it’s in there! Thought I’d share in case anyone else is interested
As for the app it’s coming along quite well. Currently messaging and adding friends is supported, and the frontend is maybe 20% done.
that looks very nice! that’s honestly an amazing project! old skype reminds a lot of memories and it’s good to see people being interested in it enough to make projects like this good luck with this!
Wish you luck through this because that’s a lot to go through! Really means a lot to me that you’re trying to bring back the old Skype and to a lot of other people too, take your time on it!
There aren’t any working classic Skype revivals I know about. It’s like seeing my childhood come back to me.