28 ms·

Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

687 points by smusamashah 6y ago

brightball 6y ago
This is exciting! I thought Pidgin had died off, but with the sheer number of chat platforms out there I'd much rather install a single Pidgin client to keep up with them. Can it work effectively with the more closed system clients that exist today though?
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Surprising to see both Discord and Slack on the list! No MS Teams, though.
  - rijoja 6y ago
    Good
  - thecrumb 6y ago
    And what does my company use... MS Teams... what has to be the worst program ever. Sigh.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 6y ago
  The link says there is support for signal, telegram, slack, whatsapp, even battle.net!!
  - swiley 6y ago
    I use finch (the curses version of pidgen) to keep up with people on discord from tmux. The only closed platform it doesn't seem to work with that I use is imessage.
andrewmcwatters 6y ago
I'm glad to see Pidgin still alive and well. I remember ages ago moving to it from Trillian, and I don't think there's any other software around like it.
- creaturemachine 6y ago
  Personally I'm holding out for the resurrection of ICQ.
  - _joel 6y ago
    Isn't that now an unencrypted network owned by a questionable Russian chap?
    - daveslash 6y ago
      This literally triggered the ICQ "Uh Oh!" sound in my memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhGHerssyk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhGHerssyk4
  - flatiron 6y ago
    I will gladly sell my 5 digit ICQ number if it does.
kowlo 6y ago
I had no idea Pidgin still worked. I see support for WhatsApp and Signal, going to check it out now!
- nautical 6y ago
  Last commit seems to be pretty old (~5 years) https://github.com/davidgfnet/whatsapp-purple/ https://github.com/davidgfnet/whatsapp-purple/
  - memco 6y ago
    Not sure that’s the right place to look for up to date code. I believe it is self hosted somewhere. The lead developer streams on twitch[0]. Last stream was about a day ago. [0]: https://twitch.tv/rw_grim https://twitch.tv/rw_grim
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    So? That doesn't mean it doesn't still work. I use it every day as my Hangouts[0] client at work[1]. [0] Technically it's a Google Talk client, but it seems to be able to communicate fine with Hangouts users for now. [1] Yes we use Hangouts at work for intradepartmental chat.
  - spiffytech 6y ago
    The repository list linked from the Pidgin website seems to be pretty active: https://keep.imfreedom.org/pidgin/pidgin/ https://keep.imfreedom.org/pidgin/pidgin/
  - w0m 6y ago
    whatsapp existed 5 years ago o.0
  - thesuitonym 6y ago
    The nice thing about modular, open source software, is that instead of using the 5 year old client, you can use the one that was last updated two months ago: https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/ https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/
graftak 6y ago
Holy smokes, this (or Adium, rather) is what I used back in the day to chat with my MSN friends in the age of aqua. https://adium.im https://adium.im
rijoja 6y ago
Ah it's still alive. If not a time for revival! So many good memories!!
rukshn 6y ago
I can remember how I was able to chat with my Facebook friends with Pidgin, those were the days. I don't think Facebook will allow any client to support chat like they used to do back in the days, unless you do some wired bridging hacks like you have to do in Matrix Edit - fixed typo
- lostmsu 6y ago
  I still use Messenger via Pidgin. My biggest gripe is lack of support for latest Unicode emoji.
  - rukshn 6y ago
    How does it work now? usually back in the day I had to download a plugin enter email/username or password. and that's it. Does it require some bridge hack or something like that?
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      It looks like they reverse-engineered the Android client. https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  I remember using Pidgin for my accounts on Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo - happy days :)
albertzeyer 6y ago
Adium (https://adium.im/ https://adium.im/) used to be the MacOSX native version (port) of Pidgin. It seems they still recommend it. However, Adium seems kind of dead? Last commit (https://github.com/adium/adium/ https://github.com/adium/adium/) was in 2016. I build a MacOSX app bundle for the original Pidgin long time ago (https://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-macosx/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-macosx/). At that point in time, this was not so trivial, as the GTK support for native MacOSX was experimental (http://www.gtk-osx.org/ http://www.gtk-osx.org/). You could simply use the X11 GTK version but I rather wanted to have a native version. I have no idea what the current state is with GTK on MacOSX. This Pidgin build is obviously very outdated now (from 2009), and probably does not run on recent MacOSX versions (they are frequently breaking backward compatibility...).
- olq 6y ago
  Looks like work is being done in a branch: https://github.com/adium/adium/commits/adium-1.5.11.asher.1011fix https://github.com/adium/adium/commits/adium-1.5.11.asher.10...
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  GTK on macOS is completely fine, unless newer versions of GTK have borked it. We use GTK2 for Ardour (cross platform DAW) and there are almost no issues. I did contribute numerous important patches for the quartz backend along the way.
  - TingPing 6y ago
    GTK3 is slightly better than GTK2 on macOS and GTK4 is getting a lot better with a paid developer working on it.
    - rw_grim 6y ago
      Pidgin will be in Gtk4 one day.. But right now we're still trying to replace deprecated API that we're using with Gtk3...
  - 6y ago
hestefisk 6y ago
Does anyone know if the WhatsApp plugin works?
- pmlnr 6y ago
  Yes, it is. You're looking for this: https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp It has limitations, especially on media.
azhenley 6y ago
Two days ago Beeper, a (almost?) universal chat app, was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278
- RogantisAgat 6y ago
  I'd say the thing that makes Pidgin more attractive is the fact it's free, whereas Beeper is $10/mo (unless you host the entire stack yourself, and at that point you can't use the Beeper app). Granted, Beeper has mobile apps going for it.
  - smt88 6y ago
    Pidgin is basically dead. When all the big messengers closed off their protocols, keeping compatibility became very labor intensive. It doesn't look like any FOSS has been able to do it, so I'm optimistic about Beeper.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  They are two different classes of applications. Beeper uses transports (or 'bridges'), Pidgin is a multiprotocol client.
tootie 6y ago
There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation since the days of dial-up.
- flatiron 6y ago
  I think discord/slack/teams seem to have shaken up the IM market recently.
  - tootie 6y ago
    Of course, and we'll new dominant players in 5 years. My point is just that none of these do anything radically different from IRC. Channel-based as the primary mode (as opposed to direct) is a bit of paradigm shift in terms of UX, but it's just a veneer on group chats that have existed forever. And obviously, they've all been adapted to web/smartphones as opposed to terminal. But in terms of what kind of communication they enable, it's absolutely nothing new. I could do this kind of thing on Quantum Link on my Commodore.
    - anthony_barker 6y ago
      i like Matrix Element as they are trying to redo IRC with encryption.
    - symlinkk 6y ago
      Wow, you could send videos, pictures, and markdown on your Commodore?
      - handoflixue 6y ago
        They did make modems for the Commodore, yes... The big obstacle to sending video back in those days was one of bandwidth and storage space - it's not difficult to add to the protocols. IRC is a pretty well-known client for easily sending files - it's purely a design decision not to display them in-line like Discord and Slack.
    - 6y ago
turlando 6y ago
When XMPP was quite widespread and lots of my friends used it Pidgin was my trusted software. I'm very happy it's still being maintained and to see lots of plugin for new IM protocols/services (Telegram for instance). It's a pity that the font on the new website is too thin for me and very hard to read :\
Rooster61 6y ago
Considering this is open source (which I'm assuming includes the plugins), wouldn't this be a much better alternative to the native apps on mobile? Curious as to why this hasn't been ported to Android/iOS. I'd much prefer this over apps that need permission to my blood type to function. Pidgin was great back in the day for convenience, but there is a legitimate argument to be made for privacy here too. EDIT: It just occurred to me that this would probably work on linux phones. Anyone with a Pinephone or Librem 5 tried this?
- mr_gibbins 6y ago
  If it were ported to Android/iOS, it'd need to adhere to the relevant standards from Google/Apple. If it did (and that's a hard task itself, see every other 'Google/Apple blocked my app' thread on HN) then it'd quickly be squashed by the other major competitors. Can't have a non-monetised, FOSS, universal application available in the app stores! That's like ... that's like COMMUNISM, or something! /s
- GlTChWhISKY 6y ago
  The simple answer is the developer (Gary) doesnt have the time. The project needs help. Rwgrim on twitch is the lead dev
  - Implicated 6y ago
    https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
- fattire 6y ago
  For whatever reason I kind of remember Gaim/Adium/Pidgin/libpurple had a run of security issues back in the day too.. I assume that stuff got fixed up by now... but I think at the time that accounted for its decline. Oh, now that I think of it wasn't XMPP (streaming XML) originally invented for Jabber which Pidgin supported?
- sneak 6y ago
  iOS applications aren't allowed to stay awake constantly talking to a bunch of different network services. For iOS IM to work, a centralized server (and corresponding developer ID) has to send a notification to you, sent first to Apple to be proxied via Apple's push notification service (APNS) to which each iOS device maintains a persistent connection. This means that some third party service has to know when you get a message (and thus needs to proxy your connections to the IM services, and know your credentials and see your message contents) to be able to know when to send that notification. This (and Signal now replacing the cryptographically shattered iMessage) is probably the main reason I'm switching to Android; truly decentralized/private notifications aren't really possible on iOS. They have to come from the app developer's own 24/7 online servers, sent from them to you via Apple servers, which means that federated stuff is basically out without providing your login details to the developer (which of course lets them see all your messages). This is also why almost no ActivityPub/fediverse clients can notify you of DMs on iOS either if you run your own instance. I know there's Background App Refresh now that lets apps wake up periodically to download stuff; I'm not sure if such polling can fire off notifications from the local app. It's probably too much latency for IM, however, due to the fact that Background App Refresh isn't (last I looked) allowed to run continuously (for battery reasons).
_joel 6y ago
Probably the most seamless chat client I used (XMMP, IRC, etc) years back. Not used it in years, will check it out again.
ephaeton 6y ago
still using finch (libpurple text ui client coming from the same corner) on a daily basis. Easy to keep it running on a tmux session on my server, ready for a ssh/mosh + tmux attach. Prevents all the syncing of chat histories everywhere...
- erikschoster 6y ago
  I <3 finch too, though I haven't used it in quite a while. It has a really impressive TUI with windowing etc. For example: https://inconsolation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013-01-24-solo-2150-finch.png https://inconsolation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013-01-24...
k__ 6y ago
I used it back in the days with MSN, AIM, and ICQ. But it didn't work as good with the switch of communication to mobile and the rise of WhatsApp and FB Messenger. Anyone got fresh experience?
mushufasa 6y ago
the main maintainer livestreams his work on pidgin on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
zohvek 6y ago
One of the main developers of pidgin streams on twitch. https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
chrismarlow9 6y ago
Nostalgia for meebo. Miss that thing, ahead of it's time.
- refracture 6y ago
  I used Meebo a lot, and I'm only just now realizing the shutdown was because of Google. They bought out the company to assign the staff to Google+. What a waste.
marco_craveiro 6y ago
Wow great to see Pidgin still going. libpurple was a fantastic idea, and its great to see there is bitlbee integration [1]. Need to update my Emacs setup to use this! [2] [1] https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoPurple https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoPurple [2] https://200ok.ch/posts/2019-11-01_irc_and_emacs_all_the_things.html https://200ok.ch/posts/2019-11-01_irc_and_emacs_all_the_thin...
haunter 6y ago
Why do 3 people mentioning in the comments that the main dev is streaming on Twitch with link to the channel? Seems suspicious Like literally nothing to add just "the main maintainer livestreams his work on pidgin on twitch" "One of the main developers of pidgin streams on twitch" Edit: of course I got downvoted when I pointed this out. Astroturfing is prevalent on HN as well.
- moistbar 6y ago
  Because it's an old project and a lot of people, myself included, are surprised to find out the devs are still working on it.
htatche 6y ago
Still going? Wow! I remember it from the MSN Messenger days.
sneak 6y ago
It would be cool if they had compiled mac binaries available on their downloads page. They instead recommend Adium, which hasn't had a commit on master in five years.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  It's on homebrew, so you might try that. As a linux dude stuck on mac at work it's my go to for installing things. brew install pidgin https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pidgin https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pidgin On pidgin, I used to use it and have been considering using it again, but right now I lean more towards WeeChat because I like having the ability to CLI it off a vps but I guess I could proxy my pidgin stuff too which is half of the reason I like doing that. (friends don't let friends irc from home, especially without cloaks!)
  - sneak 6y ago
    I don't use Homebrew because it embeds spyware. I think we should all probably stop recommending it as a result.
    - AdamGibbins 6y ago
      Are you talking about the analytics? Which most package managers have. You can easily disable it: https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics#opting-out https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics#opting-out
      - sneak 6y ago
        None of the most popular package managers, such as those included in Ubuntu, Debian, or CentOS, include spyware by default. ("opt-out", aka "assume consent even if you don't have it".) There are things like popcon that you can opt in to, but those are optional ("opt in"), and aren't on by default. Even just on macOS, neither nixpkgs nor macports will transmit your activities to anyone. I think your "most" claim is inaccurate.
agurk 6y ago
This list is potentially out of date. Looking at the bottom of the page is the tag: > Modified 2019-04-17 by Anon This is nearly two years ago, and checking archive.org for the same page (earliest copy is Jan 2020) [0], it seems not to have changed since then. Knowing that protocols do change with time, this probably doesn't give a good overview of what is currently working with it. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200129221838if_/http://www.pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type= https://web.archive.org/web/20200129221838if_/http://www.pid...
jdlyga 6y ago
Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.
- vehemenz 6y ago
  Yes. It was the de facto AIM client for many years.
- zshift 6y ago
  I had a real Obi Wan Kenobi moment when I saw this at the top of hackernews.
  - valarauko 6y ago
    I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi
    - dewarrn1 6y ago
      These are not the IM protocols you seek. On-topic, Pidgin remains great, I still install it on every new desktop, but I haven't fired it up in years. I suppose it's been displaced by Slack, more's the pity.
      - tannhaeuser 6y ago
        Nah, these are elegant weapons from a more civilized age. When developers talked about protocols rather than products.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I still have my .purple backup. It even had a Steam plugin I recall which was great since Steam itself didn't have chat logs.
  - 6y ago
SubiculumCode 6y ago
Man. I see the pidgin chat client is at the top of HN, and I was thinking. I use Mattermost, Slack, Discord, and on occasion Facebook, and Pidgin has plugins for all of them. Maybe this would be nice.
- SubiculumCode 6y ago
  I gave it an honest try this morning. Managed to get Facebook and Slack integrated. The Mattermost plugin did not work, and is not actively maintained. In the end I did not like the experience. inline images/web-previews, etc were not enabled (possible by plugin?), ui was a bit clunky and disorganized. Not sure if that is pidgin or the plugins fault.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
Still using it as my Hangouts client via ye-olde GTalk plugin, even though I thought Google had stopped supporting it. I've debated several times switching over to the purple-hangouts plugin so that I can get proper groupchat support, but the last time I tried it wanted me to do some shady-looking stuff with signing into Google and using the Developer Tools to grab the authentication key.
- smt88 6y ago
  They're killing Hangouts soon, so this is probably moot anyway.
  - H1Supreme 6y ago
    I thought it was just transitioning to Chat?
    - smt88 6y ago
      Yes, but Chat is a totally different code base. Hangouts API clients will stop working.
millzlane 6y ago
RIP AIM.
upbeatlinux 6y ago
Does Pidgin still store passwords in a plaintext file in your user profile?
- Macha 6y ago
  This argument has been argued over and over. Either the passwords are stored in some form of symmetric encryption to which the secret is not required to be entered by the user on startup, in which case it's just security theater as malware/nosy fellow users can just grab the key too, or they make you enter a master key on startup, which most users will not enable The same is ultimately true for browser password managers also. Do you know both Chrome and Firefox let you export all your passwords as plaintext CSV?
  - smt88 6y ago
    Windows and Mac have had solutions to this for years. You can encrypt user files using their OS login, so they don't have to decrypt every time they start the app.
    - Macha 6y ago
      What does this gain over just encrypting the drive/backups? Anything running on the system has the same access. If the drive is not encrypted, surely for Windows at least it's possible to reverse engineer the encryption secret. Maybe on Mac you could do something with T2, but now your config is not portable, and still doesn't solve the malware on the system case or the "your sibling/visitor/housemate whoever has physical access".
      - Avery3R 6y ago
        In a multi-user system using DPAPI [1] on windows protects secrets from other users, even if the disk is not encrypted. Secrets are encrypted with the user's password. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200830203837/https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dpapi/nf-dpapi-cryptprotectdata https://web.archive.org/web/20200830203837/https://docs.micr...
slumdev 6y ago
Pidgin is included in the TAILS image. It's a good idea to know how to use it.
orliesaurus 6y ago
Oh the memories, this was the literal first app I would install back in the ~2010 era
bingo_cannon 6y ago
Oof I still remember the update that disabled re-sizing of the text box and people were up in arms about it. And there was a fork of Pidgin over it.
krisgenre 6y ago
Ah! the glorious days of integrated chat clients. I had friends of MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk and for a very limited time ICQ (Actually it was the same guys on all networks :) ). There weren't any network effort, people were willing to try out different IMs for their uniqueness. Lots of companies were trying to produce integrated chat clients - Pidgin, Meebo, Trillian, Digsby and a whole lot of guys on Mobile targeting Symbian OS (could recollect only Nimbuzz though.) I loved Digsby because it acted as a POP client too. I even worked for a company that forked Ignite Realtime Spark and tried adding Gtalk and MSN support. When I was freelancing one guy asked me to clone meebo for $500 .. and I accepted :facepalm.
- ComodoHacker 6y ago
  Miranda IM, anyone?
  - remux 6y ago
    I have used Miranda IM every day <3
  - santah 6y ago
    Yep!
- ravenstine 6y ago
  > When I was freelancing one guy asked me to clone meebo for $500 .. and I accepted :facepalm. We've all said yes to those kinds of deals at least once. I once did a website for a company full-stack from setting up the backend to design and frontend JS for ~$600. I wasn't as experienced so I didn't value my work as much as I should have.
- MivLives 6y ago
  I used Digsby for so long, once they stopped developing was about the time I moved off those chat clients to Skype. Meebo too, back in high school we'd play cat and mouse with Meebo Repeater, and a few other fun sites (an image board for our school, a really rough freeware proxy) with the IT guys. All run out of old pcs we had in our closests. Highlight was when they redirected the free url we were using to Barney.com
hackerpain 6y ago
Using it since a decade, I faced bugs in the PGP encryption add on, they need to work on a lot of things to make it secure. This is my go-to Jabber client.
tylerjwilk00 6y ago
Woah! Totally forgot about this. This was the go to chat client on all my Linux boxes back in the day. Was a great piece of must have software back when IM was the primary communication method among my internet friends.
Sodman 6y ago
I used to love using Pidgin to aggregate all of my chat clients into one UX. These days with most of the platforms I use running on proprietary protocols I'm too worried about getting my accounts banned for using questionable clients built by reverse-engineering these protocols. I've heard enough Google Account horror stories that it doesn't seem worth the risk.
kop316 6y ago
While I really like Pidgin, I really wish their developer reference for plugins were a bit easier to work with/understand. The only thing I find is here: https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/CHowTo https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/CHowTo (Their new website https://pidgin.im/development/ https://pidgin.im/development/ has nothing on making plugins) But it does not explain things like How to create new chats/IMs, how to create new buddies, what the Buddy List is (Which I found out, the buddy list https://docs.pidgin.im/pidgin/2.x.y/blist_8h.html https://docs.pidgin.im/pidgin/2.x.y/blist_8h.html is NOT a list of buddies that you have, but is a list of things like all of your chats, a list of buddies, and some other things I have yet to figure out, and this is needed for libpurple to understand what chats you do and don't have). They explain what their APIs do, but I have been typically finding it much easier to look though Matrix's libpurple plugin (or some of the more established plugins) to figure out how they do things like make a new chat room, add buddies, etc. Perhaps it is also because I have only been looking through others code, but I feel like the APIs are a bit on the limited side (Like trying to add two pictures and text in a single chat, for example. Do I send two files then make text? do I add one picture at a time?). I hate to say, it makes it really hard to try to make/support/extend plugins. (For those curious, I have been working to add MMS support to libpurple: https://source.puri.sm/kop316/purple-mm-sms https://source.puri.sm/kop316/purple-mm-sms , so that the Pinephone can have MMS support).
- arbitrage 6y ago
  I tried to contribute code to the pidgin project a long time ago. I was attempting to flesh out the plugin architecture and functionality (yes, including documentation! i was a big nerd back then. still am, tbh) The guy who ran the project back then was an arrogant sanctimonious asshole. Everything was a goddamn power play with him. I left that project quickly for greener OSS pastures.
  - kop316 6y ago
    That's really sad to hear. I have been working mainly with the Chatty devs, and they have been great to work with so far. Maybe the v3 API is better, but tbh the v2 API feels very much like it was designed for the AIM/MSN days. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just makes the plugin architecture feel very inflexible. But the Chatty folks seem to be moving away from libpurple (for much the same reasons), so I don't know how much more I will work with it.
dalu 6y ago
First Client to my knowledge that had an otr encryption plugin
naushniki 6y ago
My company uses Skype for business(Lync) for internal communication. Unfortunately the official software is not available for Linux which prevents me from switching to Linux on my corporate machine. I know there is a plugin for Pidgin to use Lync. I wonder if anybody tried to use it long enough to tell if it is good enough. I know that the official Mac client is much less stable then the Windows one.
- Sodman 6y ago
  I was in a similar situation about ~4 years ago as one of the only devs running linux in an all-windows shop. I used Pidgin as a Lync client. It had some downsides, I remember "status" notifications were particularly buggy, and screen-sharing/video obviously didn't work at all, but for one-on-one text chat it was fine! YMMV though as this was a while ago.
- momothereal 6y ago
  Same thing here! Eventually the Lync-XMPP bridge was shutdown by IT, so we all switched to Mattermost which is similar to Slack.
- se6 6y ago
  I am pretty much the only Linux user in my company. Pidgin works ok with Lync (need to install pidgin-sipe on Ubuntu). Video and audio calls do not work, but text chats, sending/receiving files and screen sharing works fine. (I have not tried to share my screen though but I see their screens fine).
- sevrinsky 6y ago
  I've also used Skype for Business (aka Lync) using the Pidgin plugin on Linux, which worked fine for chat and files.
pmlnr 6y ago
I have a github repo to collect plugins that makes Pidgin a bit more up to date on all levels. Pull requests welcome: https://github.com/petermolnar/awesome-pidgin-plugins https://github.com/petermolnar/awesome-pidgin-plugins
robofanatic 6y ago
Any Digsby fans here? It was my favorite IM aggregator back in the day. You could also plug in twitter and facebook feeds to it so there was no need to login to twitter or facebook separately!
jacob019 6y ago
We use XMPP in our workplace. We used to use Pidgin years ago but at the time it didn't support all the protocol extensions that we needed. Now we use Gajim on the desktops and Conversations on android.
whydoyoucare 6y ago
Get it on iPhone, and people will use it. Yeah, yeah, license and all that are mere excuses, and it doesn't alter the fact :-/
rco8786 6y ago
Holy cow, i had no idea Pidgin was still around
bitigchi 6y ago
Ah, good old Pidgin (and Adium). Both are no-nonsense straight on-point software. We need them more these days.
lhball 6y ago
It's wild that this is still around. Just re-installed it to manage my Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram all in the same place =-)
theltrj 6y ago
Pidgin? What year is it again? Glad to see it still around.
CrankyBear 6y ago
I used to use Pidgin all the time. But, as the years went by, it supported fewer and fewer of the IM services and protocols I used so I finally bid it adieu.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  Actually more and more IM services shut down public APIs as the web transitioned into extracting value from user lock-in and analytics.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chenster 6y ago
Pidgin, oh my, whoever used it before would be in their 40+ now.
osamagirl69 6y ago
I have been using pidgin since it was called GAIM, and it is quite honestly one of my favorite pieces of software. No anti-user features, minimal bloat, no nags, just a full featured stable chat client.
morsch 6y ago
This didn't make me try out Pidgin again, but it did make me ls ~/.purple: Turns out there are some conversations from 2008-2011 that have carried over through my various Linux reinstalls since then. Fun!
cptskippy 6y ago
I used Pidgin for over a decade to chat with friends across ICQ, AIM, Gtalk, Hangouts, and YIM. I eventually gave up because the chat clients I needed weren't supported and keeping it working with things like Hangouts became tedious. I don't feel like downloading DLLs from GitHub and copying them into directories to get Emoji support or to update Plug-ins that break month to month.
furyofantares 6y ago
I stopped using Pidgin back when everyone I know stopped using ICQ, MSN, AIM, and it was all down to Gtalk anyway. Hadn't really noticed the re-explosion for some reason, but looking at the list of what Pidgin supports, I'm using quite a few things on the list (Steam, Discord, Slack, FB Messenger)
SubiculumCode 6y ago
It would be nice if it did inline images, inline web-previews, inline video players, etc, if not by default, then with clear path to enabling.
Fabricio20 6y ago
New website looks cool, however I shall rant once again - I spent quite a bit of time searching for some screenshots of the application as well as an "about" section describing what it is, only to find some of it on the old website. It's cool to do a refresh but please bring the screenshots back and write a bit more about it on the about page - it's empty right now!
mixmastamyk 6y ago
I used to use it, the later telepathy/empathy stuff on Gnome as well. At some point I started using Facebook, and it obviated the need for a chat client running all the time. Work places seem to be enamored with Slack these days. Bummer, can't even remember my old logins. Not ICQ nor MSN, Jabber on Facebook doesn't work any longer, might be able to figure out the Yahoo, hmm.
ASpaceCowboi 6y ago
WOW throwback!!!
kristianpaul 6y ago
Back to use pidgin then!
pedro2 6y ago
Anyone know what happened to the 3.x branch?
newdude116 6y ago
Pidgin is too buggy. try apt install dino-im Only thing is missing is a setting that a message produces a sound. But otherwise, much better, much more secure. https://dino.im/ https://dino.im/
pachico 6y ago
I used to love it. I then gradually got myself out of chats for productivity reasons and kept Slack since my company uses it.
mdtrooper 6y ago
There is a trick to using Pidgin in Termux, it is not userfriendly but it runs. $ pkg search finch Sorting... Done Full Text Search... Done finch/stable 2.14.1 arm Text-based multi-protocol instant messaging client finch-static/stable 2.14.1 arm Static libraries for finch $
- mdtrooper 6y ago
  Sorry in Android with termux.
airnomad 6y ago
Do you guys remember Meebo? They had web based interface built on top of libpurple which powers Pidgin too. Google bought them and shut them down.
- onedr0p 6y ago
  > Google bought them and shut them down. This is the way.
easterncalculus 6y ago
The developer of Pidgin livestreams on Twitch, if I remember correctly.
rodolphoarruda 6y ago
The website has a new look and feel, but there is something I found really annoying. If you go to the Plugin page you might be thrilled (like me) to see Telegram and Whatsapp icons among many others suggesting the possibility of making Pidgin your nirvana IM. Well, the Whatsapp plugin in not updated since 2016. So... that was a real bummer. I'd be nice to review that plugin list and be more precise about what's available and what's not.
Kaze404 6y ago
If you like watching programming streams, you can catch the lead developer (iirc) of Pidgin on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
selfishgene 6y ago
In a nutshell, what reason is left to prefer Pidgin over using a more modern protocol like Matrix with the Element client and bridging to legacy services as necessary? All the FAQ for Matrix offers on this point is the ability to unify ones identity across services. Anything else?
- ganafagol 6y ago
  Pidgin is a client for many protocols. Matrix being one of them. I suggest you actually click on the link and scroll down to the table.
  - selfishgene 6y ago
    Yes, but Element is also a client for many protocols, Matrix being one of them. Maybe then I should have asked why still use Pidgin over Element?
madrox 6y ago
I was thinking about Pidgin the other day when Beeper was on the front page. It seems we're back on the consolidation bandwagon for IM clients. Which leaves me more grateful than ever that browsers have (more or less) avoided this yoyo between segmentation and consolidation that messaging clients have. It's what keeps me feeling optimistic about the web vs any kind of alternative open protocol for two-way communication like Scuttlebutt.
jzer0cool 6y ago
Whoa nelly, didn't know this was still a thing after all these years. I'd be impressed if someone here has an account on every chat client here. Back over a decade ago, the chat client you used I felt in many ways represented who you might be in the world. Living in the U.S.: ICQ: techy, AIM: your close friends, msn: international contacts. And no, there was no skype at this time. In retrospect, I felt that skype was one of the first here to begin gaining momentum bridging many users into one platform. Not saying here it was good or bad, but an observation my own contacts migrating new a new platform. I had used pidgeon as long as I was actively using a desktop computer which was "always running" so I could see who is online, away, etc. It was a norm then, I find to believe to share your online status.
maxpert 6y ago
Aaa the sweet old memories of having yahoo, hotmail, aol at one place! I still remember the notification sounds and emojis :D
blacklight 6y ago
Am I really the only CLI guy in the room who still prefers irssi+bitlbee-libpurple over Pidgin? Am I doomed to be this guy https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/? :)
pidgin123 6y ago
Am I the only one who don't see MS Teams in the list?
pidgin123 6y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't see MS Teams on the list?
d99kris 6y ago
Seeing Pidgin on HN brings back good old memories, having used it back in its hey day. I actually tried it again just a couple of months ago but the main thing I miss is syncing / download of server-side chat history.
kypro 6y ago
Damn, it's been a while since I've thought about Pidgin. I used to use it every day a decade or so ago. I was thinking the other day how excited I got about Windows Phone 7 because of how they centralised chats and social feeds from multiple services under a single contact tile. Back then I could see a future where we wouldn't need to log onto Facebook to update our status, or sign into Skype to make a call, but we would instead have a single app which would aggregate all of our communication services into a single UI. I don't know what happened to that vision. I seem to use so many different communication apps these days. On my desktop I normally have WhatsApp, Signal, MS Teams, Skype, Slack and Apple Mail open at all times and I also keep my phone near me for SMS and calls. Thankfully I don't use social media anymore, but if I did I guess I would also have at least one or two tabs open for Facebook and Twitter. It seems in recent years platforms have been increasingly restrictive about what you can and can't do with their APIs and chat services such as Slack have ended their support for IRC and XMPP altogether. I understand the move from a business perspective, but it sucks as an end user of these services. In a lot of ways it seems we've gone backwards from the days of XMPP and Pidgin.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Same with webOS having a central messaging app. It was buggy sometimes but it was early days and promising. So sad webOS died and then Windows Phone.
bArray 6y ago
Did anyone here manage to get the Whatsapp plugin to work?
rmbeard 6y ago
In terms of supported languages why doesn't pidgin support pidgin. Tagio tumas.
Khaine 6y ago
I miss the days of using trillian and Adium. It was great being able to talk w with all your friends in one place, even if they used different chat services. So sad that this has disappeared, and what has replaced it is not as good, and in many ways a regression.
paulryanrogers 6y ago
Strange this lands on their plug-in page. But still I'm grateful for plug-ins and Pidgin. There was a time they spoke incoming chats with TTS and I could dictate responses to rest my hands. It even had a Slack plug-in, though I found it too rough to use full time.
Psype 6y ago
I discovered Pidgin in 2010. We could use chat system via a plug-in, and out school were using their "own" protocol for an internal chat system, AKA NetSoul. You either had the choice of the CLI NetSoul client, a GTK one not-so-great, or a plug-in into that awesome thing that is Pidgin. Nowadays I use it For Lync, the Business version of Skype.
foobarbecue 6y ago
Pidgin / Adium is an important part of operations for Mars Rover Curiosity. Probably many other missions too.
maqp 6y ago
Pidgin. A flock of zero-days flying in formation. If you're going to use it, PROTECT CONTENT by using the OTR end-to-end encryption plugin https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ WARNING: OTR is opt-in E2EE for every session, and that uses old cryptographic primitives (DH-1536 etc.). OTRv4 is in the works but that's going to take years before you have an upgrade: https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4 https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4 (Note that Pidgin-OTR v.4.0.2 IS THE E2EE PLUGIN VERSION, NOT THE PROTOCOL VERSION. The protocol version is still 3: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/Protocol-v3-4.1.1.html https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/Protocol-v3-4.1.1.html) In the meantime, use https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/ that uses modern primitives like Curve25519, and that you can't f up as it's not possible to use it without end-to-end encryption. PROTECT METADATA by proxying your Pidgin connection via Tor from registration to use. Preferably register your XMPP account to an XMPP Onion Service server. This prevents you from accidentally conneting to the server without Tor which would deanonymize you. List of XMPP Onion Services can be found at https://gist.github.com/dllud/a46d4a555e31dfeff6ad41dcf20729ac#file-xmpp-servers-tor-hidden-service-md https://gist.github.com/dllud/a46d4a555e31dfeff6ad41dcf20729... Ask your peers to do so too. Note, since this is something that requires manual configuration, it's easy to mess up. A better solution is to ditch Pidgin and use https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ that you can't accidentally f up as you can't use it without Tor (unless they live in the flat above you, then you can use BT/WiFI), and you can't forget to use E2EE.
- rw_grim 6y ago
  We'd love to hear about these zero days over at security@pidgin.im so we can fix them or you can just keep spouting about stuff that afaict doesn't actual exist.
fattybob 6y ago
Universal - i wish it were - or please make an IOS version....
thenoblesunfish 6y ago
To play devil‘s advocate a bit, isn‘t my phone (or laptop) already a universal chat client? I have a bunch of apps for different services. I can see when new messages come in on all of them, I can swipe/click to respond, I can control the notification settings.
puzzlingcaptcha 6y ago
Pidgin is lagging hard in implementing new XMPP extensions (such as 0280, 0313 or 0363) making it unfortunately quite useless for Jabber.
- rw_grim 6y ago
  patches welcome ;)
notorandit 6y ago
All protocol plugins together will let you cover 5% of the user base. When people will switch away from WhatsApp we will still need support for signal and telegram...
als0 6y ago
Been a long time user of Pidgin and OTR/XMPP. Been very grateful to those who maintain it. Sadly it doesn't seem to have a big community compared to that which Matrix/Riot seem to enjoy.

687 points by smusamashah 6y ago

This is exciting! I thought Pidgin had died off, but with the sheer number of chat platforms out there I'd much rather install a single Pidgin client to keep up with them. Can it work effectively with the more closed system clients that exist today though?

TameAntelope 6y ago
Surprising to see both Discord and Slack on the list! No MS Teams, though.
- rijoja 6y ago
  Good
- thecrumb 6y ago
  And what does my company use... MS Teams... what has to be the worst program ever. Sigh.
c0wb0yc0d3r 6y ago
The link says there is support for signal, telegram, slack, whatsapp, even battle.net!!
- swiley 6y ago
  I use finch (the curses version of pidgen) to keep up with people on discord from tmux. The only closed platform it doesn't seem to work with that I use is imessage.

andrewmcwatters 6y ago

I'm glad to see Pidgin still alive and well. I remember ages ago moving to it from Trillian, and I don't think there's any other software around like it.

creaturemachine 6y ago
Personally I'm holding out for the resurrection of ICQ.
- _joel 6y ago
  Isn't that now an unencrypted network owned by a questionable Russian chap?
  - daveslash 6y ago
    This literally triggered the ICQ "Uh Oh!" sound in my memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhGHerssyk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhGHerssyk4
- flatiron 6y ago
  I will gladly sell my 5 digit ICQ number if it does.

kowlo 6y ago

I had no idea Pidgin still worked. I see support for WhatsApp and Signal, going to check it out now!

nautical 6y ago
Last commit seems to be pretty old (~5 years) https://github.com/davidgfnet/whatsapp-purple/ https://github.com/davidgfnet/whatsapp-purple/
- memco 6y ago
  Not sure that’s the right place to look for up to date code. I believe it is self hosted somewhere. The lead developer streams on twitch[0]. Last stream was about a day ago. [0]: https://twitch.tv/rw_grim https://twitch.tv/rw_grim
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  So? That doesn't mean it doesn't still work. I use it every day as my Hangouts[0] client at work[1]. [0] Technically it's a Google Talk client, but it seems to be able to communicate fine with Hangouts users for now. [1] Yes we use Hangouts at work for intradepartmental chat.
- spiffytech 6y ago
  The repository list linked from the Pidgin website seems to be pretty active: https://keep.imfreedom.org/pidgin/pidgin/ https://keep.imfreedom.org/pidgin/pidgin/
- w0m 6y ago
  whatsapp existed 5 years ago o.0
- thesuitonym 6y ago
  The nice thing about modular, open source software, is that instead of using the 5 year old client, you can use the one that was last updated two months ago: https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/ https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/

graftak 6y ago

Holy smokes, this (or Adium, rather) is what I used back in the day to chat with my MSN friends in the age of aqua. https://adium.im https://adium.im

rijoja 6y ago

Ah it's still alive. If not a time for revival! So many good memories!!

rukshn 6y ago

I can remember how I was able to chat with my Facebook friends with Pidgin, those were the days. I don't think Facebook will allow any client to support chat like they used to do back in the days, unless you do some wired bridging hacks like you have to do in Matrix Edit - fixed typo

lostmsu 6y ago
I still use Messenger via Pidgin. My biggest gripe is lack of support for latest Unicode emoji.
- rukshn 6y ago
  How does it work now? usually back in the day I had to download a plugin enter email/username or password. and that's it. Does it require some bridge hack or something like that?
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    It looks like they reverse-engineered the Android client. https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook
noisy_boy 6y ago
I remember using Pidgin for my accounts on Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo - happy days :)

albertzeyer 6y ago

Adium (https://adium.im/ https://adium.im/) used to be the MacOSX native version (port) of Pidgin. It seems they still recommend it. However, Adium seems kind of dead? Last commit (https://github.com/adium/adium/ https://github.com/adium/adium/) was in 2016. I build a MacOSX app bundle for the original Pidgin long time ago (https://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-macosx/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-macosx/). At that point in time, this was not so trivial, as the GTK support for native MacOSX was experimental (http://www.gtk-osx.org/ http://www.gtk-osx.org/). You could simply use the X11 GTK version but I rather wanted to have a native version. I have no idea what the current state is with GTK on MacOSX. This Pidgin build is obviously very outdated now (from 2009), and probably does not run on recent MacOSX versions (they are frequently breaking backward compatibility...).

olq 6y ago
Looks like work is being done in a branch: https://github.com/adium/adium/commits/adium-1.5.11.asher.1011fix https://github.com/adium/adium/commits/adium-1.5.11.asher.10...
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
GTK on macOS is completely fine, unless newer versions of GTK have borked it. We use GTK2 for Ardour (cross platform DAW) and there are almost no issues. I did contribute numerous important patches for the quartz backend along the way.
- TingPing 6y ago
  GTK3 is slightly better than GTK2 on macOS and GTK4 is getting a lot better with a paid developer working on it.
  - rw_grim 6y ago
    Pidgin will be in Gtk4 one day.. But right now we're still trying to replace deprecated API that we're using with Gtk3...
- 6y ago

hestefisk 6y ago

Does anyone know if the WhatsApp plugin works?

pmlnr 6y ago
Yes, it is. You're looking for this: https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp It has limitations, especially on media.

azhenley 6y ago

Two days ago Beeper, a (almost?) universal chat app, was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278

RogantisAgat 6y ago
I'd say the thing that makes Pidgin more attractive is the fact it's free, whereas Beeper is $10/mo (unless you host the entire stack yourself, and at that point you can't use the Beeper app). Granted, Beeper has mobile apps going for it.
- smt88 6y ago
  Pidgin is basically dead. When all the big messengers closed off their protocols, keeping compatibility became very labor intensive. It doesn't look like any FOSS has been able to do it, so I'm optimistic about Beeper.
Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
They are two different classes of applications. Beeper uses transports (or 'bridges'), Pidgin is a multiprotocol client.

tootie 6y ago

There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation since the days of dial-up.

flatiron 6y ago
I think discord/slack/teams seem to have shaken up the IM market recently.
- tootie 6y ago
  Of course, and we'll new dominant players in 5 years. My point is just that none of these do anything radically different from IRC. Channel-based as the primary mode (as opposed to direct) is a bit of paradigm shift in terms of UX, but it's just a veneer on group chats that have existed forever. And obviously, they've all been adapted to web/smartphones as opposed to terminal. But in terms of what kind of communication they enable, it's absolutely nothing new. I could do this kind of thing on Quantum Link on my Commodore.
  - anthony_barker 6y ago
    i like Matrix Element as they are trying to redo IRC with encryption.
  - symlinkk 6y ago
    Wow, you could send videos, pictures, and markdown on your Commodore?
    - handoflixue 6y ago
      They did make modems for the Commodore, yes... The big obstacle to sending video back in those days was one of bandwidth and storage space - it's not difficult to add to the protocols. IRC is a pretty well-known client for easily sending files - it's purely a design decision not to display them in-line like Discord and Slack.
  - 6y ago

turlando 6y ago

When XMPP was quite widespread and lots of my friends used it Pidgin was my trusted software. I'm very happy it's still being maintained and to see lots of plugin for new IM protocols/services (Telegram for instance). It's a pity that the font on the new website is too thin for me and very hard to read :\

Rooster61 6y ago

Considering this is open source (which I'm assuming includes the plugins), wouldn't this be a much better alternative to the native apps on mobile? Curious as to why this hasn't been ported to Android/iOS. I'd much prefer this over apps that need permission to my blood type to function. Pidgin was great back in the day for convenience, but there is a legitimate argument to be made for privacy here too. EDIT: It just occurred to me that this would probably work on linux phones. Anyone with a Pinephone or Librem 5 tried this?

mr_gibbins 6y ago
If it were ported to Android/iOS, it'd need to adhere to the relevant standards from Google/Apple. If it did (and that's a hard task itself, see every other 'Google/Apple blocked my app' thread on HN) then it'd quickly be squashed by the other major competitors. Can't have a non-monetised, FOSS, universal application available in the app stores! That's like ... that's like COMMUNISM, or something! /s
GlTChWhISKY 6y ago
The simple answer is the developer (Gary) doesnt have the time. The project needs help. Rwgrim on twitch is the lead dev
- Implicated 6y ago
  https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
fattire 6y ago
For whatever reason I kind of remember Gaim/Adium/Pidgin/libpurple had a run of security issues back in the day too.. I assume that stuff got fixed up by now... but I think at the time that accounted for its decline. Oh, now that I think of it wasn't XMPP (streaming XML) originally invented for Jabber which Pidgin supported?
sneak 6y ago
iOS applications aren't allowed to stay awake constantly talking to a bunch of different network services. For iOS IM to work, a centralized server (and corresponding developer ID) has to send a notification to you, sent first to Apple to be proxied via Apple's push notification service (APNS) to which each iOS device maintains a persistent connection. This means that some third party service has to know when you get a message (and thus needs to proxy your connections to the IM services, and know your credentials and see your message contents) to be able to know when to send that notification. This (and Signal now replacing the cryptographically shattered iMessage) is probably the main reason I'm switching to Android; truly decentralized/private notifications aren't really possible on iOS. They have to come from the app developer's own 24/7 online servers, sent from them to you via Apple servers, which means that federated stuff is basically out without providing your login details to the developer (which of course lets them see all your messages). This is also why almost no ActivityPub/fediverse clients can notify you of DMs on iOS either if you run your own instance. I know there's Background App Refresh now that lets apps wake up periodically to download stuff; I'm not sure if such polling can fire off notifications from the local app. It's probably too much latency for IM, however, due to the fact that Background App Refresh isn't (last I looked) allowed to run continuously (for battery reasons).

_joel 6y ago

Probably the most seamless chat client I used (XMMP, IRC, etc) years back. Not used it in years, will check it out again.

ephaeton 6y ago

still using finch (libpurple text ui client coming from the same corner) on a daily basis. Easy to keep it running on a tmux session on my server, ready for a ssh/mosh + tmux attach. Prevents all the syncing of chat histories everywhere...

erikschoster 6y ago
I <3 finch too, though I haven't used it in quite a while. It has a really impressive TUI with windowing etc. For example: https://inconsolation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013-01-24-solo-2150-finch.png https://inconsolation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013-01-24...

k__ 6y ago

I used it back in the days with MSN, AIM, and ICQ. But it didn't work as good with the switch of communication to mobile and the rise of WhatsApp and FB Messenger. Anyone got fresh experience?

mushufasa 6y ago

the main maintainer livestreams his work on pidgin on twitch https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim

zohvek 6y ago

One of the main developers of pidgin streams on twitch. https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim

chrismarlow9 6y ago

Nostalgia for meebo. Miss that thing, ahead of it's time.

refracture 6y ago
I used Meebo a lot, and I'm only just now realizing the shutdown was because of Google. They bought out the company to assign the staff to Google+. What a waste.

marco_craveiro 6y ago

Wow great to see Pidgin still going. libpurple was a fantastic idea, and its great to see there is bitlbee integration [1]. Need to update my Emacs setup to use this! [2] [1] https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoPurple https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoPurple [2] https://200ok.ch/posts/2019-11-01_irc_and_emacs_all_the_things.html https://200ok.ch/posts/2019-11-01_irc_and_emacs_all_the_thin...

haunter 6y ago

Why do 3 people mentioning in the comments that the main dev is streaming on Twitch with link to the channel? Seems suspicious Like literally nothing to add just "the main maintainer livestreams his work on pidgin on twitch" "One of the main developers of pidgin streams on twitch" Edit: of course I got downvoted when I pointed this out. Astroturfing is prevalent on HN as well.

moistbar 6y ago
Because it's an old project and a lot of people, myself included, are surprised to find out the devs are still working on it.

htatche 6y ago

Still going? Wow! I remember it from the MSN Messenger days.

sneak 6y ago

It would be cool if they had compiled mac binaries available on their downloads page. They instead recommend Adium, which hasn't had a commit on master in five years.

arminiusreturns 6y ago
It's on homebrew, so you might try that. As a linux dude stuck on mac at work it's my go to for installing things. brew install pidgin https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pidgin https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pidgin On pidgin, I used to use it and have been considering using it again, but right now I lean more towards WeeChat because I like having the ability to CLI it off a vps but I guess I could proxy my pidgin stuff too which is half of the reason I like doing that. (friends don't let friends irc from home, especially without cloaks!)
- sneak 6y ago
  I don't use Homebrew because it embeds spyware. I think we should all probably stop recommending it as a result.
  - AdamGibbins 6y ago
    Are you talking about the analytics? Which most package managers have. You can easily disable it: https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics#opting-out https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics#opting-out
    - sneak 6y ago
      None of the most popular package managers, such as those included in Ubuntu, Debian, or CentOS, include spyware by default. ("opt-out", aka "assume consent even if you don't have it".) There are things like popcon that you can opt in to, but those are optional ("opt in"), and aren't on by default. Even just on macOS, neither nixpkgs nor macports will transmit your activities to anyone. I think your "most" claim is inaccurate.

agurk 6y ago

This list is potentially out of date. Looking at the bottom of the page is the tag: > Modified 2019-04-17 by Anon This is nearly two years ago, and checking archive.org for the same page (earliest copy is Jan 2020) [0], it seems not to have changed since then. Knowing that protocols do change with time, this probably doesn't give a good overview of what is currently working with it. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200129221838if_/http://www.pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type= https://web.archive.org/web/20200129221838if_/http://www.pid...

jdlyga 6y ago

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

vehemenz 6y ago
Yes. It was the de facto AIM client for many years.
zshift 6y ago
I had a real Obi Wan Kenobi moment when I saw this at the top of hackernews.
- valarauko 6y ago
  I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi
  - dewarrn1 6y ago
    These are not the IM protocols you seek. On-topic, Pidgin remains great, I still install it on every new desktop, but I haven't fired it up in years. I suppose it's been displaced by Slack, more's the pity.
    - tannhaeuser 6y ago
      Nah, these are elegant weapons from a more civilized age. When developers talked about protocols rather than products.
ehsankia 6y ago
I still have my .purple backup. It even had a Steam plugin I recall which was great since Steam itself didn't have chat logs.
- 6y ago

SubiculumCode 6y ago

Man. I see the pidgin chat client is at the top of HN, and I was thinking. I use Mattermost, Slack, Discord, and on occasion Facebook, and Pidgin has plugins for all of them. Maybe this would be nice.

SubiculumCode 6y ago
I gave it an honest try this morning. Managed to get Facebook and Slack integrated. The Mattermost plugin did not work, and is not actively maintained. In the end I did not like the experience. inline images/web-previews, etc were not enabled (possible by plugin?), ui was a bit clunky and disorganized. Not sure if that is pidgin or the plugins fault.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

Still using it as my Hangouts client via ye-olde GTalk plugin, even though I thought Google had stopped supporting it. I've debated several times switching over to the purple-hangouts plugin so that I can get proper groupchat support, but the last time I tried it wanted me to do some shady-looking stuff with signing into Google and using the Developer Tools to grab the authentication key.

smt88 6y ago
They're killing Hangouts soon, so this is probably moot anyway.
- H1Supreme 6y ago
  I thought it was just transitioning to Chat?
  - smt88 6y ago
    Yes, but Chat is a totally different code base. Hangouts API clients will stop working.

millzlane 6y ago

RIP AIM.

upbeatlinux 6y ago

Does Pidgin still store passwords in a plaintext file in your user profile?

Macha 6y ago
This argument has been argued over and over. Either the passwords are stored in some form of symmetric encryption to which the secret is not required to be entered by the user on startup, in which case it's just security theater as malware/nosy fellow users can just grab the key too, or they make you enter a master key on startup, which most users will not enable The same is ultimately true for browser password managers also. Do you know both Chrome and Firefox let you export all your passwords as plaintext CSV?
- smt88 6y ago
  Windows and Mac have had solutions to this for years. You can encrypt user files using their OS login, so they don't have to decrypt every time they start the app.
  - Macha 6y ago
    What does this gain over just encrypting the drive/backups? Anything running on the system has the same access. If the drive is not encrypted, surely for Windows at least it's possible to reverse engineer the encryption secret. Maybe on Mac you could do something with T2, but now your config is not portable, and still doesn't solve the malware on the system case or the "your sibling/visitor/housemate whoever has physical access".
    - Avery3R 6y ago
      In a multi-user system using DPAPI [1] on windows protects secrets from other users, even if the disk is not encrypted. Secrets are encrypted with the user's password. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200830203837/https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dpapi/nf-dpapi-cryptprotectdata https://web.archive.org/web/20200830203837/https://docs.micr...

slumdev 6y ago

Pidgin is included in the TAILS image. It's a good idea to know how to use it.

orliesaurus 6y ago

Oh the memories, this was the literal first app I would install back in the ~2010 era

bingo_cannon 6y ago

Oof I still remember the update that disabled re-sizing of the text box and people were up in arms about it. And there was a fork of Pidgin over it.

krisgenre 6y ago

Ah! the glorious days of integrated chat clients. I had friends of MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk and for a very limited time ICQ (Actually it was the same guys on all networks :) ). There weren't any network effort, people were willing to try out different IMs for their uniqueness. Lots of companies were trying to produce integrated chat clients - Pidgin, Meebo, Trillian, Digsby and a whole lot of guys on Mobile targeting Symbian OS (could recollect only Nimbuzz though.) I loved Digsby because it acted as a POP client too. I even worked for a company that forked Ignite Realtime Spark and tried adding Gtalk and MSN support. When I was freelancing one guy asked me to clone meebo for $500 .. and I accepted :facepalm.

ComodoHacker 6y ago
Miranda IM, anyone?
- remux 6y ago
  I have used Miranda IM every day <3
- santah 6y ago
  Yep!
ravenstine 6y ago
> When I was freelancing one guy asked me to clone meebo for $500 .. and I accepted :facepalm. We've all said yes to those kinds of deals at least once. I once did a website for a company full-stack from setting up the backend to design and frontend JS for ~$600. I wasn't as experienced so I didn't value my work as much as I should have.
MivLives 6y ago
I used Digsby for so long, once they stopped developing was about the time I moved off those chat clients to Skype. Meebo too, back in high school we'd play cat and mouse with Meebo Repeater, and a few other fun sites (an image board for our school, a really rough freeware proxy) with the IT guys. All run out of old pcs we had in our closests. Highlight was when they redirected the free url we were using to Barney.com

hackerpain 6y ago

Using it since a decade, I faced bugs in the PGP encryption add on, they need to work on a lot of things to make it secure. This is my go-to Jabber client.

tylerjwilk00 6y ago

Woah! Totally forgot about this. This was the go to chat client on all my Linux boxes back in the day. Was a great piece of must have software back when IM was the primary communication method among my internet friends.

Sodman 6y ago

I used to love using Pidgin to aggregate all of my chat clients into one UX. These days with most of the platforms I use running on proprietary protocols I'm too worried about getting my accounts banned for using questionable clients built by reverse-engineering these protocols. I've heard enough Google Account horror stories that it doesn't seem worth the risk.

kop316 6y ago

While I really like Pidgin, I really wish their developer reference for plugins were a bit easier to work with/understand. The only thing I find is here: https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/CHowTo https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/CHowTo (Their new website https://pidgin.im/development/ https://pidgin.im/development/ has nothing on making plugins) But it does not explain things like How to create new chats/IMs, how to create new buddies, what the Buddy List is (Which I found out, the buddy list https://docs.pidgin.im/pidgin/2.x.y/blist_8h.html https://docs.pidgin.im/pidgin/2.x.y/blist_8h.html is NOT a list of buddies that you have, but is a list of things like all of your chats, a list of buddies, and some other things I have yet to figure out, and this is needed for libpurple to understand what chats you do and don't have). They explain what their APIs do, but I have been typically finding it much easier to look though Matrix's libpurple plugin (or some of the more established plugins) to figure out how they do things like make a new chat room, add buddies, etc. Perhaps it is also because I have only been looking through others code, but I feel like the APIs are a bit on the limited side (Like trying to add two pictures and text in a single chat, for example. Do I send two files then make text? do I add one picture at a time?). I hate to say, it makes it really hard to try to make/support/extend plugins. (For those curious, I have been working to add MMS support to libpurple: https://source.puri.sm/kop316/purple-mm-sms https://source.puri.sm/kop316/purple-mm-sms , so that the Pinephone can have MMS support).

arbitrage 6y ago
I tried to contribute code to the pidgin project a long time ago. I was attempting to flesh out the plugin architecture and functionality (yes, including documentation! i was a big nerd back then. still am, tbh) The guy who ran the project back then was an arrogant sanctimonious asshole. Everything was a goddamn power play with him. I left that project quickly for greener OSS pastures.
- kop316 6y ago
  That's really sad to hear. I have been working mainly with the Chatty devs, and they have been great to work with so far. Maybe the v3 API is better, but tbh the v2 API feels very much like it was designed for the AIM/MSN days. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just makes the plugin architecture feel very inflexible. But the Chatty folks seem to be moving away from libpurple (for much the same reasons), so I don't know how much more I will work with it.

dalu 6y ago

First Client to my knowledge that had an otr encryption plugin

naushniki 6y ago

My company uses Skype for business(Lync) for internal communication. Unfortunately the official software is not available for Linux which prevents me from switching to Linux on my corporate machine. I know there is a plugin for Pidgin to use Lync. I wonder if anybody tried to use it long enough to tell if it is good enough. I know that the official Mac client is much less stable then the Windows one.

Sodman 6y ago
I was in a similar situation about ~4 years ago as one of the only devs running linux in an all-windows shop. I used Pidgin as a Lync client. It had some downsides, I remember "status" notifications were particularly buggy, and screen-sharing/video obviously didn't work at all, but for one-on-one text chat it was fine! YMMV though as this was a while ago.
momothereal 6y ago
Same thing here! Eventually the Lync-XMPP bridge was shutdown by IT, so we all switched to Mattermost which is similar to Slack.
se6 6y ago
I am pretty much the only Linux user in my company. Pidgin works ok with Lync (need to install pidgin-sipe on Ubuntu). Video and audio calls do not work, but text chats, sending/receiving files and screen sharing works fine. (I have not tried to share my screen though but I see their screens fine).
sevrinsky 6y ago
I've also used Skype for Business (aka Lync) using the Pidgin plugin on Linux, which worked fine for chat and files.

pmlnr 6y ago

I have a github repo to collect plugins that makes Pidgin a bit more up to date on all levels. Pull requests welcome: https://github.com/petermolnar/awesome-pidgin-plugins https://github.com/petermolnar/awesome-pidgin-plugins

robofanatic 6y ago

Any Digsby fans here? It was my favorite IM aggregator back in the day. You could also plug in twitter and facebook feeds to it so there was no need to login to twitter or facebook separately!

jacob019 6y ago

We use XMPP in our workplace. We used to use Pidgin years ago but at the time it didn't support all the protocol extensions that we needed. Now we use Gajim on the desktops and Conversations on android.

whydoyoucare 6y ago

Get it on iPhone, and people will use it. Yeah, yeah, license and all that are mere excuses, and it doesn't alter the fact :-/

rco8786 6y ago

Holy cow, i had no idea Pidgin was still around

bitigchi 6y ago

Ah, good old Pidgin (and Adium). Both are no-nonsense straight on-point software. We need them more these days.

lhball 6y ago

It's wild that this is still around. Just re-installed it to manage my Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram all in the same place =-)

theltrj 6y ago

Pidgin? What year is it again? Glad to see it still around.

CrankyBear 6y ago

I used to use Pidgin all the time. But, as the years went by, it supported fewer and fewer of the IM services and protocols I used so I finally bid it adieu.

black_puppydog 6y ago
Actually more and more IM services shut down public APIs as the web transitioned into extracting value from user lock-in and analytics.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chenster 6y ago

Pidgin, oh my, whoever used it before would be in their 40+ now.

osamagirl69 6y ago

I have been using pidgin since it was called GAIM, and it is quite honestly one of my favorite pieces of software. No anti-user features, minimal bloat, no nags, just a full featured stable chat client.

morsch 6y ago

This didn't make me try out Pidgin again, but it did make me ls ~/.purple: Turns out there are some conversations from 2008-2011 that have carried over through my various Linux reinstalls since then. Fun!

cptskippy 6y ago

I used Pidgin for over a decade to chat with friends across ICQ, AIM, Gtalk, Hangouts, and YIM. I eventually gave up because the chat clients I needed weren't supported and keeping it working with things like Hangouts became tedious. I don't feel like downloading DLLs from GitHub and copying them into directories to get Emoji support or to update Plug-ins that break month to month.

furyofantares 6y ago

I stopped using Pidgin back when everyone I know stopped using ICQ, MSN, AIM, and it was all down to Gtalk anyway. Hadn't really noticed the re-explosion for some reason, but looking at the list of what Pidgin supports, I'm using quite a few things on the list (Steam, Discord, Slack, FB Messenger)

SubiculumCode 6y ago

It would be nice if it did inline images, inline web-previews, inline video players, etc, if not by default, then with clear path to enabling.

Fabricio20 6y ago

New website looks cool, however I shall rant once again - I spent quite a bit of time searching for some screenshots of the application as well as an "about" section describing what it is, only to find some of it on the old website. It's cool to do a refresh but please bring the screenshots back and write a bit more about it on the about page - it's empty right now!

mixmastamyk 6y ago

I used to use it, the later telepathy/empathy stuff on Gnome as well. At some point I started using Facebook, and it obviated the need for a chat client running all the time. Work places seem to be enamored with Slack these days. Bummer, can't even remember my old logins. Not ICQ nor MSN, Jabber on Facebook doesn't work any longer, might be able to figure out the Yahoo, hmm.

ASpaceCowboi 6y ago

WOW throwback!!!

kristianpaul 6y ago

Back to use pidgin then!

pedro2 6y ago

Anyone know what happened to the 3.x branch?

newdude116 6y ago

Pidgin is too buggy. try apt install dino-im Only thing is missing is a setting that a message produces a sound. But otherwise, much better, much more secure. https://dino.im/ https://dino.im/

pachico 6y ago

I used to love it. I then gradually got myself out of chats for productivity reasons and kept Slack since my company uses it.

mdtrooper 6y ago

There is a trick to using Pidgin in Termux, it is not userfriendly but it runs. $ pkg search finch Sorting... Done Full Text Search... Done finch/stable 2.14.1 arm Text-based multi-protocol instant messaging client finch-static/stable 2.14.1 arm Static libraries for finch $

mdtrooper 6y ago
Sorry in Android with termux.

airnomad 6y ago

Do you guys remember Meebo? They had web based interface built on top of libpurple which powers Pidgin too. Google bought them and shut them down.

onedr0p 6y ago
> Google bought them and shut them down. This is the way.

easterncalculus 6y ago

The developer of Pidgin livestreams on Twitch, if I remember correctly.

rodolphoarruda 6y ago

The website has a new look and feel, but there is something I found really annoying. If you go to the Plugin page you might be thrilled (like me) to see Telegram and Whatsapp icons among many others suggesting the possibility of making Pidgin your nirvana IM. Well, the Whatsapp plugin in not updated since 2016. So... that was a real bummer. I'd be nice to review that plugin list and be more precise about what's available and what's not.

Kaze404 6y ago

If you like watching programming streams, you can catch the lead developer (iirc) of Pidgin on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim

selfishgene 6y ago

In a nutshell, what reason is left to prefer Pidgin over using a more modern protocol like Matrix with the Element client and bridging to legacy services as necessary? All the FAQ for Matrix offers on this point is the ability to unify ones identity across services. Anything else?

ganafagol 6y ago
Pidgin is a client for many protocols. Matrix being one of them. I suggest you actually click on the link and scroll down to the table.
- selfishgene 6y ago
  Yes, but Element is also a client for many protocols, Matrix being one of them. Maybe then I should have asked why still use Pidgin over Element?

madrox 6y ago

I was thinking about Pidgin the other day when Beeper was on the front page. It seems we're back on the consolidation bandwagon for IM clients. Which leaves me more grateful than ever that browsers have (more or less) avoided this yoyo between segmentation and consolidation that messaging clients have. It's what keeps me feeling optimistic about the web vs any kind of alternative open protocol for two-way communication like Scuttlebutt.

jzer0cool 6y ago

Whoa nelly, didn't know this was still a thing after all these years. I'd be impressed if someone here has an account on every chat client here. Back over a decade ago, the chat client you used I felt in many ways represented who you might be in the world. Living in the U.S.: ICQ: techy, AIM: your close friends, msn: international contacts. And no, there was no skype at this time. In retrospect, I felt that skype was one of the first here to begin gaining momentum bridging many users into one platform. Not saying here it was good or bad, but an observation my own contacts migrating new a new platform. I had used pidgeon as long as I was actively using a desktop computer which was "always running" so I could see who is online, away, etc. It was a norm then, I find to believe to share your online status.

maxpert 6y ago

Aaa the sweet old memories of having yahoo, hotmail, aol at one place! I still remember the notification sounds and emojis :D

blacklight 6y ago

Am I really the only CLI guy in the room who still prefers irssi+bitlbee-libpurple over Pidgin? Am I doomed to be this guy https://xkcd.com/1782/ https://xkcd.com/1782/? :)

pidgin123 6y ago

Am I the only one who don't see MS Teams in the list?

pidgin123 6y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't see MS Teams on the list?

d99kris 6y ago

Seeing Pidgin on HN brings back good old memories, having used it back in its hey day. I actually tried it again just a couple of months ago but the main thing I miss is syncing / download of server-side chat history.

kypro 6y ago

Damn, it's been a while since I've thought about Pidgin. I used to use it every day a decade or so ago. I was thinking the other day how excited I got about Windows Phone 7 because of how they centralised chats and social feeds from multiple services under a single contact tile. Back then I could see a future where we wouldn't need to log onto Facebook to update our status, or sign into Skype to make a call, but we would instead have a single app which would aggregate all of our communication services into a single UI. I don't know what happened to that vision. I seem to use so many different communication apps these days. On my desktop I normally have WhatsApp, Signal, MS Teams, Skype, Slack and Apple Mail open at all times and I also keep my phone near me for SMS and calls. Thankfully I don't use social media anymore, but if I did I guess I would also have at least one or two tabs open for Facebook and Twitter. It seems in recent years platforms have been increasingly restrictive about what you can and can't do with their APIs and chat services such as Slack have ended their support for IRC and XMPP altogether. I understand the move from a business perspective, but it sucks as an end user of these services. In a lot of ways it seems we've gone backwards from the days of XMPP and Pidgin.

skinnymuch 6y ago
Same with webOS having a central messaging app. It was buggy sometimes but it was early days and promising. So sad webOS died and then Windows Phone.

bArray 6y ago

Did anyone here manage to get the Whatsapp plugin to work?

rmbeard 6y ago

In terms of supported languages why doesn't pidgin support pidgin. Tagio tumas.

Khaine 6y ago

I miss the days of using trillian and Adium. It was great being able to talk w with all your friends in one place, even if they used different chat services. So sad that this has disappeared, and what has replaced it is not as good, and in many ways a regression.

paulryanrogers 6y ago

Strange this lands on their plug-in page. But still I'm grateful for plug-ins and Pidgin. There was a time they spoke incoming chats with TTS and I could dictate responses to rest my hands. It even had a Slack plug-in, though I found it too rough to use full time.

Psype 6y ago

I discovered Pidgin in 2010. We could use chat system via a plug-in, and out school were using their "own" protocol for an internal chat system, AKA NetSoul. You either had the choice of the CLI NetSoul client, a GTK one not-so-great, or a plug-in into that awesome thing that is Pidgin. Nowadays I use it For Lync, the Business version of Skype.

foobarbecue 6y ago

Pidgin / Adium is an important part of operations for Mars Rover Curiosity. Probably many other missions too.

maqp 6y ago

Pidgin. A flock of zero-days flying in formation. If you're going to use it, PROTECT CONTENT by using the OTR end-to-end encryption plugin https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ WARNING: OTR is opt-in E2EE for every session, and that uses old cryptographic primitives (DH-1536 etc.). OTRv4 is in the works but that's going to take years before you have an upgrade: https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4 https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4 (Note that Pidgin-OTR v.4.0.2 IS THE E2EE PLUGIN VERSION, NOT THE PROTOCOL VERSION. The protocol version is still 3: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/Protocol-v3-4.1.1.html https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/Protocol-v3-4.1.1.html) In the meantime, use https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/ that uses modern primitives like Curve25519, and that you can't f up as it's not possible to use it without end-to-end encryption. PROTECT METADATA by proxying your Pidgin connection via Tor from registration to use. Preferably register your XMPP account to an XMPP Onion Service server. This prevents you from accidentally conneting to the server without Tor which would deanonymize you. List of XMPP Onion Services can be found at https://gist.github.com/dllud/a46d4a555e31dfeff6ad41dcf20729ac#file-xmpp-servers-tor-hidden-service-md https://gist.github.com/dllud/a46d4a555e31dfeff6ad41dcf20729... Ask your peers to do so too. Note, since this is something that requires manual configuration, it's easy to mess up. A better solution is to ditch Pidgin and use https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ that you can't accidentally f up as you can't use it without Tor (unless they live in the flat above you, then you can use BT/WiFI), and you can't forget to use E2EE.

rw_grim 6y ago
We'd love to hear about these zero days over at security@pidgin.im so we can fix them or you can just keep spouting about stuff that afaict doesn't actual exist.

fattybob 6y ago

Universal - i wish it were - or please make an IOS version....

thenoblesunfish 6y ago

To play devil‘s advocate a bit, isn‘t my phone (or laptop) already a universal chat client? I have a bunch of apps for different services. I can see when new messages come in on all of them, I can swipe/click to respond, I can control the notification settings.

puzzlingcaptcha 6y ago

Pidgin is lagging hard in implementing new XMPP extensions (such as 0280, 0313 or 0363) making it unfortunately quite useless for Jabber.

rw_grim 6y ago
patches welcome ;)

notorandit 6y ago

All protocol plugins together will let you cover 5% of the user base. When people will switch away from WhatsApp we will still need support for signal and telegram...

als0 6y ago

Been a long time user of Pidgin and OTR/XMPP. Been very grateful to those who maintain it. Sadly it doesn't seem to have a big community compared to that which Matrix/Riot seem to enjoy.