Microsoft started forcing Windows Live Messenger users over to Skype nearly a year ago, and it has been a painful experience. If you use Skype frequently for messaging then the missed messages, out-of-sync chats, and blasts of old messages are a regular and irritating experience. You can use Skype on a desktop PC to chat to a friend, but when you move to a smartphone or tablet the conversation doesn’t always sync properly or the mobile apps bombard you with notifications for old chats. It's a broken experience. Thankfully, Microsoft promised to fix it and it's delivering on part of that commitment today.

"We know that as users have started using Skype on multiple devices, they’ve had difficulty keeping conversations in sync," admits Microsoft. "We’ve been working hard to solve these issues while adding other experiences to make an improved Skype chat." Over the past few weeks, Microsoft has been rolling out updates to its various Skype clients across iOS, Android, Windows, and Windows Phone. They’ve all been designed to improve the push notifications experience in Skype, as well as sync conversations across all devices running the apps.

Notifications across multiple devices will be fixed in the coming months

Providing you have the latest Skype app installed, you’ll no longer have issues syncing messages across multiple devices, or random notifications for old chat threads. The only part of the puzzle that’s missing now is a method to prevent notifications from triggering across multiple devices. That fix isn't coming today, but in the coming months Microsoft is planning to address this, so "you’ll only receive notifications on the device you’re actively using." Alongside today's changes Microsoft has also and improved the performance of its apps as well as battery drain. In the coming months, Skype will also start syncing the favorite contact list across all devices.

Most of the problems over the past year have stemmed from a transition from Skype’s peer-to-peer networks to Microsoft’s cloud-powered servers. Skype was traditionally used on desktop PCs initially, and as mobile growth has accelerated it has had to adjust accordingly. It’s a mobile effort that Microsoft faces in other key areas of its business as a new CEO attempts to focus the company on "cloud and mobile first."

Update: Microsoft misspoke over seeing confirmation that messages have been delivered in Skype. We have updated the article to correct this.