Pidgin Plugins - Extending Pidgin with Guifications and the Purple Plugin Pack

Last updated May 13, 2010 6:09 PM

Need even more flexibility and functionality with your copy of Pidgin? Pidgin supports all kinds of plugins, as we saw when we downloaded the Off The Record plugin in an earlier tutorial. If you're looking to customize your Pidgin experience even further, there are two fantastic plugin packs you may want to consider.

This plugin adds a pop-up notification window when someone sends you an instant message, comes online or mentions your name in a chat. You can configure exactly which events trigger a notification in the plugins preferences. The picture below shows the notification window in action:-

In use, we found the plugin worked poorly. The default font is a little too small, especially when running Pidgin on a secondary monitor. Unfortunately there's no way to easily change the default font, changing the font size in the plugins preferences seemed to have no effect on the notifications. The plugin also instantly crashed Pidgin on an XP machine we tested it on, yet strangely worked without any issues on two Windows 7 machines.

Guifications is a welcome enhancement to Pidgin, it's a shame it isn't more polished. A new version is under development and you can find out more about the plugin by visiting this page. Download the latest version of the plugin by visiting this page. Download the .exe version (ID 6), the other versions are for linux. Remember that new plugins need to be activated and configured before they can be used. All plugins activate the same way once installed, see this tutorial for an example.

This bumper pack of plugins for Pidgin enhances the program in all kinds of possible ways. From providing additional control over your current status messages to splitting up large messages into smaller ones, the Purple Plugin Pack is well worth a look for all IM addicted individuals. To download the Purple Plugin Pack, visit this page.

The Purple Plugin pack contains over 50 new plugins. On the next page we'll show you some of our favourites. Before we do that, the video below will show you how to install new plugins for Pidgin:-

In the next part of the article, we'll take a look at some of our favourite Pidgin plugins, both from the Purple Pack and from those included with the program.