Decluttering Skype...

Like many freelancers I find myself using Skype every day to talk with friends, colleagues and clients. And, in general it's fine apart from the huge ammount of desktop space that it seems to take over.

So I quickly (very quickly) created an alternative, minimalist SkypeChatStyle which you can use to change the style of Skype on OS X to something a bit less, well chunky.

Here's some pictures to show you what I mean.

Below is the Default (only) style - Skype Modern.



And here is my new Minimal syle - WUFU Minimal.



Look, you get nearly twice as much natter for the same ammount of space. And it's brilliantly low tech. And, as far as I can tell, everything still works.

So how do you go about installing it?

Firstly download and unzip the following file.

WUFU Minimal.SkypeChatFile

Then double click on the file - WUFU Minimal.SkypeChatStyle

Skype should do the rest (at least it did for me). It will then appear in your chat preferences.

If this doesn't work, right click on the Skype application in the finder and select 'Show package contents' then navigate to /Contents/Resources/ChatStyles and drop it there. Then you'll just need to restart Skype.

I was kind of surprised that I couldn't find many other skype style files out there, if you know of any more or have made any yourself please drop me a line I'd love to hear about any others.