Goodbye Adium: Pidgin on Mac OS X… with native GTK!

So you’re on Mac OS X, and want to use Pidgin on it.

First: Why not use Adium? Adium is a Free multi-protocol IM client for Mac OS X that uses libpurple, the IM library that was developed as part of Pidgin. It has several popular features such as message styles, and uses the Cocoa API native to Mac OS X, and all round looks pretty. Being a native Cocoa application, it is more well-integrated with the Mac desktop than a GTK-using application like Pidgin can ever be.

On the other hand, if you, like me, have tried Adium and have reasons for finding it unusable, then it is possible to install Pidgin on OS X too. There are two ways of doing this:
[Edit: Note that this post is from 2007. Probably a lot has changed since then.]

1. Install Pidgin to run inside X11. Any default distribution of Pidgin should build fine on this, as long as you have all the dependencies installed. However, using an X11 app on OS X is really like entering another universe entirely… it’s like having two entirely disjoint OSes that just happen to run simultaneously. It is cumbersome, and I would not recommend it unless you are already doing much of your work inside X11 for some reason.
2. Install Pidgin to run on the Mac desktop directly (without X11), using native GTK+ for Mac OS X and some minor modifications to Pidgin. This is very simple to do and requires only one step, described below.

Instructions:

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Pidgin “now playing” plugins: updating status messages to song being played

Plugins for Pidgin (the IM client formerly known as Gaim) that update the status message to show the currently playing track, somehow getting it from your music player. Found so far, in what I think is the descending order of something no particular order:
[Note: Before you install any of these, you should be aware that most of them have been known to crash Pidgin rather frequently, and ask yourself whether it is worth it. Your friends really don’t care what you’re listening to. Really.]

• D-Bus script by Pidgin developer: works with Rhythmbox and Quod Libet. Will almost certainly not cause a crash. If you are on a Unix system and using one of these two music players, just run “python [name of script]” while Pidgin is running. If you’re on Windows… it’s not so easy. (And you’re probably using different music players anyway.)
• musictracker
  

  MusicTracker is a plugin for Pidgin (previously known as Gaim) which displays the music track currently playing in the status message of various accounts such as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk (Jabber), etc., i.e. any protocol Pidgin supports custom statuses on. Support for a wide range of audio players on both Windows and Linux platforms is planned. Currently supported players: Amarok, Rhythmbox, Audacious, XMMS, MPC/MPD, Exaile, Banshee, Quod Libet on Linux. Winamp, Windows Media Player (9+), iTunes, Foobar2000 (incomplete support) on Windows.

  Is apparently the best option, but also a very frequent cause of crashes.

• Pidgin-currenttrack
  

  Current Track plugin will update your Gaim/Pidgin user info, available message or away message, and buddy icon from iTunes, Winamp, RealPlayer, WMP, Musicmatch, MediaMonkey, XMPlay, Yahoo! & Foobar2000 in Windows and XMMS, Rhythmbox, & Amarok in Linux.

  Has been known to crash Pidgin. I’ve heard it has a feature where you can type “/currentrack” in a conversation window to send your current track, which is pretty cool. Not very useful if it crashes Pidgin though, is it?

• Pidgin Now Playing
  

  This plugin will replace %now-playing in your status message with metadata from the currently playing song in a MPRIS compatible media player (currently including BMPx 0.4, VLC SVN trunk, Audacious 1.4.0 devel), if any.

  It appears that MPRIS is an informal standard for music players to support a common interface. In an ideal world, all music players would support this standard, and in the real world, this may or may not happen. Amarok is also probably supported already.

• MusicInfo
  

  MusicInfo is a plugin for the Pidgin instant messaging client. It lets you display the music that you are listening to in your away message, available message, and profile.

  For Winamp, and some players that have a Winamp emulation mode.

• Autoprofile
  

  AutoProfile is an extension to Gaim that allows users to create customized away messages and profiles using dynamic “components” that automatically update on a regular basis. Generated text can include song names from XMMS/Winamp/iTunes, fortune quotes, computer uptime, the contents of a Web page or a text file, the output of a program, and timestamps.

  Is for Gaim 2.0.0beta3, not updated for Pidgin as of 2007-11-11 (last updated 2006-04-05, so don’t hold your breath).

• AmarokPidgin
  

  A plugin for Amarok that updates your Pidgin status message with what you are currently listening too.[sic]

  Is for Amarok only.

• Pidgin-Rhythmbox
  

  The Pidgin-Rhythmbox plugin will automatically update your Pidgin user info and status message with the currently playing music in Rhythmbox. If the artist and title are known, it will also attempt to create a link to the song’s lyrics by using Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature. Pidgin-Rhythmbox will replace %rb in your user info and status message with the song information.

  Is for Rhythmbox only.

• Write your own script. You can set status from the command line with purple-remote "setstatus?status=whatever&message=whatever". For example, purple-remote "setstatus?status=available&message=" will clear the status message. You can also use D-Bus. There is a very good introduction to D-Bus here, and Ars Technica has some examples of using Pidgin’s D-Bus interface. This is essentially what many of the above plugins do (those that don’t crash your Pidgin). Assuming that you have a way of getting the song (or whatever string you want in your status message) somehow (through D-Bus, maybe) in a script, this is certainly the most flexible option, as you can do exactly what you want with the status message (append to it v/s replace it, add the current time, artist but not title, whatever). You can also look at D-Bus Howto for Pidgin (who wrote that? :), but the harder part is getting the current song from your music player.

Note: While MusicTracker seems to be the plugin that the maximum number of people have been successful in using, it appears that it sometimes crashes Pidgin as well (especially on non-ASCII characters in the title/artist). Evidently, no plugin is perfect (except one that you write yourself :P) and you should take a moment to consider whether you really need a plugin of this sort. I know it seems cool and several IM clients provide a feature like this, but is it really necessary? Do your friends really care what music you’re listening to?