Not everybody can be online all the time. For those moments, it’s best to leave a message. That was a little difficult in Skype for Windows as you could only leave text-based messages before, but that all changed this week.

Skype announced this week that it’s rolling out the preview of Skype Video Messaging for Windows desktop users. To be more specific, Windows 7 users can now send short video messages to friends that are currently offline. The feature will be coming to Windows 8 soon.

Windows desktop users are just the latest to get Skype Video Messaging. Microsoft notes that the feature is available in preview for those using Skype on Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android. Those on Windows 8 and Windows Phone can receive video messages, but they have yet to gain the ability to record messages. Skype says it will be fixing that soon.

If you want to try out Skype Video Messaging for yourself, you’ll have to download the Skype 6.5 beta for Windows. You can grab that here. Alongside the new feature, the beta also includes two small fixes to help increase stability when calling:

In other news, Skype recently announced that Outlook.com users can now make video calls from within their browser. More info on that here.

UPDATE: Skype Video Messaging preview is now available on Windows 8 as well. Hit up the official blog post for all the details.