Skype has published instructions for correcting an issue that prevented many users from successfully logging into the service. Early Thursday morning, some Skype users found that they couldn’t log in or stay connected. Not all users were affected, however: Folks using Skype on iOS and Android devices were fine, as were some people using different desktop editions of the client.
That said, the issue did keep some callers on Mac OS X and various incarnations of Windows from connecting. According to Skype, Mac users battling connection issues can repair the problem by following these steps:
- Quit Skype.
- Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/ (~ refers to your Home directory).
- Locate the file shared.xml, and delete it.
- Launch Skype again.
Upon relaunch, Skype will generate a new version of the XML file. There’s no word yet on what caused the issue, or why deleting the XML file will correct it. Note that
Earlier in May, Microsoft agreed to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion.
Author: Lex Friedman, Senior Contributor
Lex is a former writer for Macworld. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and three kids.