This script will let you run only one instance of skype, rather than opening a new one every time you click the launcher.

If you've tried to use skype with Gnome-Do you've probably noticed that there's no way to bring the skype window back up from Do after it's gone to the system tray. This script fixes that quite nicely.

[rant] Why would skype make multi-instance the default??? Doesn't make any sense to me, since the normal user expects to get back to the running instance when they click the launcher again... [/rant]

Just download this script, extract it, and put it somewhere on your PATH. If you don't know what that means, then just extract it to the Desktop and use this command in the terminal:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/skype-single-instance /usr/local/bin/

Then you can change your launcher properties to use the skype-single-instance command instead of the normal skype command. If you're using Gnome-Do: for some reason it doesn't read off of the main menu entries... just type the extra 's' (that is, type 'skypes' instead of just 'skype'), and that should bring up skype-single-instance.

Thanks for that: it was much needed especially because running a second instance was invariably scraping my login info.

Would it be possible to extend this a little so that when the Skype window is hidden (that is, not minimized to tray but simply behind other windows) it's brought back on top? Hope my poor English is understandable...

Alessandro

jackwizard thank you so so much for this. Got this working on my Acer Lipus version of Linux. It would be even better if the skype window came on top when you run this script. (as Windows users expect). Not getting the window on top makes the script look unresponsive.

Good step in the right direction though.

Thanks.

How do I do that? Where do I modify that in Ubuntu or Linux Mint?

Awesome, awesome, awesome! Thank you for the script! Fast and easy, works with my cairo-dock.