Filed under: Internet, Open Source
Skype chat plugin for Pidgin
The open source Pidgin multi-chat client is great if you want to manage your AIM, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber, and Yahoo! Messenger accounts all from one application. But what if you want to chat with your Skype contacts? While Skype isn't one of the services supported when you first run Pidgin, you can enable Skype chat with the Skype API Plugin.The plugin comes in Linux and Windows varieties. Linux users can install the plugin using a DEB package or by copying a file to the Pidgin plugin directory. Windows users just need to copy a DLL to the plugin directory. There's also a Skype plugin for Adium for Mac users.
Now the bad news. First, there's no support for voice calls, which should come as no real surprise since Pidgin doesn't support voice chat for any protocol yet. Second, you need to run Skype in the background or you won't be able to login to your Skype account using Pidgin. Which kind of defeats the purpose if you ask us.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mark O'Neill said 6:51PM on 2-19-2008
A comment has been left on the original post at Geeks Are Sexy :
You mention that you didn’t really want the regular phone number contacts being imported into your buddy list. This is an option that you can change from within the account settings. By default this option is on so that you can still call (and pretty soon text message) your commonly used phone numbers.
Also, it’s possible to place and receive Skype calls through Pidgin; right clicking on a contact will give you the “Call…” option, and incomming calls will ask if you want to accept or reject. You can also call someone through the account’s menu for calling someone off-list.
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Tushar Joshi said 7:53AM on 2-20-2008
This has become very handy for me. I am a prolific Pidgin user and I love the CTRL+L clear the chat window feature of Pidgin. This feature was not available in Skype and only Skype chat was something I used to do separately given rest of my Yahoo, GTalk and MSN chats covered by Pidgin. This was a great tip and I am making full use of it on Windows.
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur
http://www.tusharvjoshi.com
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Peter Kirn said 11:22AM on 2-20-2008
Yeah, give it a go -- I find this very useful. And to me, since you can't do calling through Pidgin, keeping Skype in the background is a small trade-off.
You've got:
* an integrated contact list and status
* an integrated chat interface
* the ability to use skype IM tabs next to tabs from other accounts
* automatic launching of skype when you launch pidgin (I normally have to launch both)
And it takes up less RAM and runs more reliably than Digsby -- even combining both skype and pidgin. ;)
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John said 8:04AM on 2-29-2008
dont attack me if this is a stupid question but how do you log in?
it does not ask for a password and says it cannot log in.
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Brad Linder said 8:21AM on 2-29-2008
John: You need to have Skype running in the background. You login using your Skype client, not Pidgin.
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