Pidgin (formerly named Gaim) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

multi-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform softw ...

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

client, based on a

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

named libpurple that has support for many instant messaging

protocols Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

, allowing the user to simultaneously log in to various services from a single application, with a single interface for both popular and obsolete protocols (from AIM to

Discord Discord is an instant messaging and Voice over IP, VoIP social platform which allows communication through Voice over IP, voice calls, Videotelephony, video calls, text messaging, and digital media, media. Communication can be private or take ...

), thus avoiding the hassle of having to deal with new software for each device and protocol. , the number of Pidgin users was estimated to be over three million. Pidgin is widely used for its

Off-the-Record Messaging Off-the-record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR uses a combination of Advanced Encryption Standard, AES symmetric-key algorithm with 128 bits key length, the Diffie–Hel ...

(OTR) plugin, which offers

end-to-end encryption End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only communicating users can participate. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can ...

. For this reason it is included in the privacy and anonymity focused operating system Tails.

History

The program was originally written by Mark Spencer, an

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 26,800 undergraduate students, over 6,100 post-graduate students, and a tota ...

sophomore, as an emulation of AOL's IM program

AOL Instant Messenger AOL Instant Messenger (AIM, sometimes stylized as aim) was an instant messaging and presence information computer program created by AOL. It used the proprietary OSCAR protocol, OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow us ...

on Linux using the

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

toolkit.Herper, Matthew (July 16, 2002)
"Better Instant Messaging Through Linux"
Forbes.com. The earliest archived release was on December 31, 1998. It was named GAIM (''GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger'') accordingly. The emulation was not based on

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompl ...

, but instead relied on information about the protocol that AOL had published on the web. Development was assisted by some of AOL's technical staff. Support for other IM protocols was added soon thereafter. On 6 July 2015, Pidgin scored seven out of seven points on the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

's secure messaging scorecard. They have received points for having communications encrypted in transit, having communications encrypted with keys the providers don't have access to (

), making it possible for users to independently verify their correspondent's identities, having past communications secure if the keys are stolen (

forward secrecy In cryptography, forward secrecy (FS), also known as perfect forward secrecy (PFS), is a feature of specific key-agreement protocols that gives assurances that session keys will not be compromised even if long-term secrets used in the session ke ...

), having their code open to independent review (

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

), having their security designs well-documented, and having recent independent security audits. Pidgin 3.0.0 Experimental 1, a preview release of Pidgin 3 versioned as 2.90, was announced and subsequently released on December 31, 2024 after many years of development. It was shipped with IRC support, with more protocols being expected to be added in future versions. In April 2025, version 2.91, a second preview release of Pidgin 3, was released. In response to pressure from AOL, the program was renamed to the

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

ous-but-lowercase ''gaim''. As AOL Instant Messenger gained popularity, AOL trademarked its acronym, "AIM", leading to a lengthy legal struggle with the creators of GAIM, who kept the matter largely secret. On April 6, 2007, the project development team announced the results of their settlement with AOL, which included a series of name changes: ''Gaim'' became ''Pidgin'', ''libgaim'' became ''libpurple'', and ''gaim-text'' (the

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

version) became ''

Finch The true finches are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. Finches generally have stout conical bills adapted for eating seeds and nuts and often have colourful plumage. They occupy a great range of habitats where the ...

''. The name Pidgin was chosen in reference to the term "

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...

", which describes communication between people who do not share a common language. The name "purple" refers to "prpl", the internal libgaim name for an ''IM protocol plugin''. Due to the legal issues, version 2.0 of the software was frozen in beta stages. Following the settlement, it was announced that the first official release of Pidgin 2.0.0 was hoped to occur during the two weeks from April 8, 2007. However, Pidgin 2.0 was not released as scheduled; Pidgin developers announced on April 22, 2007, that the delay was due to the preferences directory ".gaim". Pidgin 2.0.0 was released on May 3, 2007. Other visual changes were made to the interface in this version, including updated icons.

Features

Pidgin provides a graphical front-end for libpurple using

. Libpurple supports many instant-messaging

. Pidgin supports multiple

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, including

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and many

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

systems such as

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, the

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

s, and

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

. It is included by default in the operating systems Tails, Trisquel and Xubuntu.

Pluggability

The program is designed to be extended with plugins. Plugins are often written by third-party developers. They can be used to add support for protocols, which is useful for those such as

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

which have licensing issues (however, the users' data and interactions are still subject to their policies and eavesdropping). They can also add other significant features. For example, the "

" (OTR) plugin provides

. The TLS encryption system is pluggable, allowing different TLS libraries to be easily substituted. GnuTLS is the default, and NSS is also supported. Some operating systems' ports, such as

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

's, choose to use

OpenSSL OpenSSL is a software library for applications that provide secure communications over computer networks against eavesdropping, and identify the party at the other end. It is widely used by Internet servers, including the majority of HTTPS web ...

or LibreSSL by default instead.

Contacts

Contacts with multiple protocols can be grouped into one single contact instead of managing multiple protocols, and contacts can be given aliases or placed into groups. To reach users as they log on or a status change occurs (such as moving from "Away" to "Available"), Pidgin supports on-action automated scripts called ''Buddy Pounces'' to automatically reach the user in customizable ways.

File transfer

Pidgin supports file transfers for many protocols. Direct, peer-to-peer file transfers are supported over protocols such as XMPP.

Voice and video chat

As of version 2.6 (released on August 18, 2009), Pidgin supports voice/video calls using Farstream. , calls can only be initiated through the XMPP protocol.

Miscellaneous

Further features include support for themes,

emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...

s, spell checking, and notification area integration.

Supported protocols

The following protocols are officially supported by Pidgin 2.14.12, without any extensions or plugins: * Gadu-Gadu *

IRC IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...

Novell GroupWise GroupWise is a messaging and collaboration platform from OpenText that supports email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management. The GroupWise platform consists of desktop client software, which ...

(to be discontinued in 3.0) *

SIMPLE Simple or SIMPLE may refer to: *Simplicity, the state or quality of being simple Arts and entertainment * ''Simple'' (album), by Andy Yorke, 2008, and its title track * "Simple" (Florida Georgia Line song), 2018 * "Simple", a song by John ...

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (abbreviation XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an Open standard, open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Ext ...

* Zephyr (to be discontinued in 3.0) Some XMPP servers provide transports, which allow users to access networks using non-XMPP protocols without having to install plugins or additional software. Pidgin's support for XMPP means that these transports can be used to communicate via otherwise unsupported protocols, including not only instant messaging protocols, but also protocols such as SMS or E-mail. Additional protocols, supported by third-party plugins, include

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

, Microsoft OCS/LCS (extended SIP/SIMPLE), Facebook Messenger, QQ,

via skype4pidgin plugin,

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

, and

Signal A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

Plugins

Various other features are supported using third-party plugins. Such features include: *

text chat via the purple-discord plugin *

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

chat via purple-facebook *

Google Chat Google Chat is a Communication software, communication service developed by Google. Initially designed for teams and business environments, it has since been made available for general consumers. It provides Private message, direct messaging, ...

via purple-googlechat * microblogs ( GNU social,

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

) *

Slack (software) Slack is a Cloud computing, cloud-based team communication platform developed by Slack Technologies, which has been owned by Salesforce since 2020. Slack uses a freemium, freemium model. Slack is primarily offered as a business-to-business serv ...

via slack-libpurple *

text chat via skype4pidgin, renamed SkypeWeb plugin *

Telegram (software) Telegram, also known as Telegram Messenger, is a Cloud computing, cloud-based, Cross-platform software, cross-platform, social media and instant messaging (IM) service. It was originally launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android on 20 Octo ...

via tdlib-purple *

End-to-end encryption End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only communicating users can participate. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can ...

, through

(OTR) * Adding mathematical formulas written in

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...

to conversations * Notifications (such as showing "toaster" popups or Snarl notifications, or lighting LEDs on laptops) * Showing contacts what the user is listening to in various media players * Watching videos directly into a conversation when receiving a video sharing website link (

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

Vimeo Vimeo ( ) is an American Online video platform, video hosting, sharing, and services provider founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices and operates on a ...

)

Criticisms

* As observed by Wired in 2015, the libpurple codebase is "known for its bountiful security bugs". In 2011, security vulnerabilities were already discovered in popular OTR plugins using libpurple. * As of version 2.4 and later, the ability to manually resize the text input box of conversations was removed. This led to a fork, Carrier (originally named Funpidgin). *

Password A password, sometimes called a passcode, is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of password-protected services t ...

s are stored in a

plaintext In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted. Overview With the advent of comp ...

file, readable by any person or program that can access the user's files. Version 3.0 of Pidgin (no announced release date) will support password storage in system keyrings such as KWallet and the GNOME Keyring for Linux,

Keychain A keychain () (also keyring) is a small ring or chain of metal to which several keys, or fobs can be attached. The terms keyring and keychain are often used interchangeably to mean both the individual ring, or a combined unit of a ring and fob ...

for macOS, and winCred API for Windows. * Pidgin does not currently support pausing or reattempting file transfers. * Pidgin does not allow disabling the group sorting on the contact list.

Other notable software based on libpurple

* Adium and the discontinued

Proteus In Greek mythology, Proteus ( ; ) is an early prophetic sea god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea" (''hálios gérôn''). Some who ascribe a specific domain to Prote ...

(both for

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

) * Meebo (web-based, no longer available) * Telepathy Haze (a Tube for some of the protocols supported by the

Telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic ...

framework) * QuteCom (cross-platform, focused on VoIP and video. Discontinued) * Instantbird (discontinued) (cross-platform, based on Mozilla's Gecko engine) BitlBee and Minbif are IRCd-like gateways to multiple IM networks, and can be compiled with libpurple to increase functionality.

References

External links

* {{IRC footer 1998 software Free instant messaging clients Free software programmed in C Instant messaging clients that use GTK Windows instant messaging clients AIM (software) clients Free XMPP clients IRC clients Free IRC clients Windows IRC clients Portable software Cross-platform free software Applications using D-Bus Yahoo! instant messaging clients Software that uses Meson