How to disable skype chat syncing?

skype

07
2014-07

Julian H. Lam

So Skype will let you (in the preferences) disable your chat history. If the other user also does the same, no chat history is saved, anywhere. However, it's a little impossible to ask every one of my Skype contacts to disable their chat history ;)

In any case, Skype has this pretty cool feature where if your log into skype from a location with no chat history, and you're chatting with somebody, Skype will automatically sync chat histories, so you can catch up, even if the other person kept talking after you left.

While this works great on desktops, it is absolutely disastrous on mobiles with ARM processors, simply because the processor isn't fast enough to handle the torrent of data that floods through.

There are reports of this happenning to iPhone users, and it absolutely cripples my N900 for several minutes while it's busy syncing up chats.

tl;dr Is there any way to disable chat syncing on my mobile device? I tried editing config.xml, but there doesn't seem to be an option to disable it...

<CentralStorage>
      <LastBackoff>0</LastBackoff>
      <LastFailure>0</LastFailure>
      <LastSync>1304514977</LastSync>
      <NeedSync>0</NeedSync>
      <SyncSet>
        <p>
          <avatar>40fabe76:2</avatar>
          <email>cdcf94a0:2</email>
          <profile>3aa645:2</profile>
        </p>

    etc ...

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Jonathan Sampson

Warning - Current status of imo.im suggests that Skype support may be fleeting:

We are unable to support Skype due to our inability to connect to their servers. We don't know if we will be able to support Skype any time soon as it depends on factors out of our control.

https://imo.im/ supports skype, and is web-based.

Completely free
It runs from any modern browser - no installation required, OS doesn't matter
No need to keep Skype installed and running (the only IM I know that does that)
Keeps logs of all your chats
Available for free for ALL major mobile OSs
Supports all major IM protocols
Links all your accounts from various IM systems to one (i.e. you can log in to any one of them, and the system will log you in to all other automatically)
Allows more than one Skype account to be running in the same time! (Just discovered it myself - I have two different accounts for work and for private chat, and it was a pin in the head to sign in and out all the time; with IMO it's great.)

With this, all others are simply out of competition.

Only one shortcoming - you can't really install it on a desktop computer as a stand-alone application, like we are used to. But it's more a problem with our habits that with the product itself.

Megan

Trillian 5 doesn't require skype to be running, or installed at all, at least for the windows version.

Robert Munteanu

Both Kopete and Pidgin have Skype plugins. The Kopete one is bundled with the main app as far as I know, and for Pidgin you have to download the Skype Pidgin plugin.

Please note that both of these require Skype to be installed and running. I've added them since I don't think you will find a legal app which natively connects to the Skype server, as Wikipedia states that:

Reverse engineering of the Skype protocol by inspecting/disassembling binaries is prohibited by the terms and conditions of Skype's license agreement.

Jonathan Sampson

SkyLlian is a Skype plugin for trillian.

Aleksandar Kolman

There is IMO.IM which support Skype without Skype installed...

That is for one obvious reason... It is a web service, and not an installed IM client.

That said, the programmers community should look their way (IMO) for knowhow. I am certain that the problem is in strong encryption Skype use in their protocols.

silent__thought

IM+ is a chat application for mobile devices (iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile) and it supports Skype among others.

Simon Sheehan

I use Trillion, love it. It uses SkyLlion as a plug in, must have Skype downloaded and running. Enjoy this chat client.

Zooks64

Trillian Astra supports Skype and many other connections.

PhillC

(Disclaimer, I'm on the Yuuguu Dev Team)

Yuuguu (Windows and Mac versions) supports Skype chat and will work with GTalk, MSN, AOL and Yahoo messenger accounts. However, as far as I know, the Skype API requires Skype to be running (although it can be switched into silent mode).

TataBlack

For completeness' sake, there Miranda, too, with its Skype protocol plugin. However, as most of the previously mentioned programs this, too, uses the Skype API, and requires Skype to be installed and running. Moreover, the Skype plugin doesn't seem to be under active development right now.

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How to disable skype chat syncing?