Skinning Pidgin – Sick of Pidgin’s Look and Feel
Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. It can be found at http://pidgin.im/ I have been using it for a while now when AIM started putting advertisements into there software. Pidgin was formally GAIM which changed its name due to legal reasons and started to rewrite their software. My friends and I have been using it for a while now and really enjoy it. However there is one complaint I hear a lot and that has to do with appearance and themes. It is for this reason that I am putting together a little guide of steps I have taken to make pidgin more my style.
The Original Buddy list is depicted below.
One thing that I do not like is that the icons each name takes up so much space. This is because the idle time and buddy information is being displayed under each buddy name. I started by disabling this feature.
- Go to buddies
- Show and un check buddy details, idle times and enable protocol icons to a style of your liking.
By doing this I can easily see more buddies online at any given moment, my buddy list looks something like and all those details I disabled are still available just by hovering over a buddy with my mouse.
Another complaint I often here is the lack of themes. Well actually there is support for themes. I will admit its a little hidden, but I am going to walk you though it now and show you where you can find hundreds of free themes.
- Pidgin uses the GTK+ orThe GIMP Toolkit for creating its graphical user interfaces. This is because it is cross platform and so is Pidgin. While my tutorial is geared towards windows users I am sure its very similar to other operating systems.
- We need to start by enabling GTK+ control in pidgin. To do that go to Tools > Plugins> and check Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control.
- Press Configure Plugin.
- Everytime you change your theme press Re-read gtkrc files to apply the theme.
- To select a new theme go to Start > All Programs > GTK+ > Theme Selector. Select a theme and press ok, then Re-Read gtkrc files to see the theme applied to Pidgin.
- Download new themes at http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/
- Unzip themes and store them in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\share\themes folder.
- I used the Litoral theme, without spending hours searching.
- Make sure you adjust the GTK+ Interface Font so it looks good with your theme. I ended up using Arial normal styles size 10.
- Now chagning the Pidgin default icons, by default they are located in C:\Program Files\Pidgin\pixmaps\pidgin
- I started picking an Icon set I liked. I found a few pre-made sets with some Google searches here some links
- Ubuntu Style
- Pidgin_neu Theme
- Pidgin_osX
- Pidgi_osX2
- A search for pidgin on this site will bring up even more.
Make sure Pidgin is not running when you make this change and make sure you backup your original icons. If you can not find any you like, you can Google search for more or make your own.
* Originally found on this forum
I settled on the Glossy Theme
In the end my pidgin looks a little something like this, I plan on tweaking it out some more though, I will keep you posted. If this post helped you in anyway please leave a comment and let me know.
Whoo! Thank you for the clear explanation of how to use the Theme Selector (which I didn’t even realize was on my computer). It would be nice if Pidgin made it more obvious than the listing of themes at install time.
•Gert
great guide on how to to do this but i have a question
how do you unzip the themes downloaded from the site? do i need a certain program?
thanks in advance
thanks man, a very good guide it helped me alot, i just switched to pidgin and was looking for a way to make it look better. thanks again
p.s. is there a way to change the sounds of pidgin? (i.e. message recived & message sent)
ilya,
I haven’t used pidgin in a year or so, I use Digsby now. I would check in you c:\program files\pidgin folder to see if there is a sounds directory, you could replace the MP3, or Wav files. Maybe someone else can shine some light on this problem.
Sam
you are rock!
Nice
But … Pidgin crashes as soon as I re-read gtk (or start pidgin again) when I don’t use MS Windows theme
(try : clearlooks, like, litoral themes…)
Any idea?
Sorry for the delay in my response. I was just checking my Spam comments and your’s accidently got marked as spam. To be honest I haven’t used pidgin in over a year. I have been using Digsby. I am not sure what is causing your issue. Do you get any type of error message?
Thanks for the step by step info. Appreciated Pal!
thanx but i got the same problem as antonin and this is what i get when it crashes
AppName: pidgin.exe AppVer: 2.5.5.0 ModName: libcairo-2.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 0001f5e8
Hey! thanks a lot for the very useful and detailed explanation.
If I choose a skin with a black background, how do I do to change the color of the message that other people write? I can change the color of my name, what I type, the color of my friends names, but I cannot change the color of their message… do I need another plugin?
thanks !
franmetti, what you need to do is set the “override message fonts” in the Pidgin preferences I believe. Then sent it to a lighter color.
Hey, thanks for the tutorial. I’m having trouble changing the font color of the status messages on the Buddy List.
Whenever someone plays a song the font fades into the background image, and I can’t figure out how to change the color.
Amazingly clear explanation and directions!!!I never even realized the presence of “GTK+” in my All Programs list, till I read thru your article. Exactly wht I was looking for. Thnx for the article! 5-thumbs up!!!!!
I did as you said, but the theme I unzipped from that website to the theme folder does not show up in the Theme Selector when I open it.
The themes need to go into Program Files\Common Files\GTK folder, not the one in Pidgin folder. Pidgin 2.7.0 tried to fix it by making GTK local (doesn’t affect the other apps) but ended up breaking GTK entirely on my Windows 7. Went back to 2.6.6 and works fine.
@ltaintrite Oh, is that why my text was light-grey on white and I couldn’t get the themes to work again? Glad I ran into your comment. Switching back to 2.6.6.
Ahh, soo much better!
Thanks for this. Pointed me in the right direction.
Hi,
I’m using pidgin 2.7.2 now and had a similar problem like the one described in the last comments.
I basically had to copy my theme from
C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\share\themes
To
C:\Program Files\Pidgin\Gtk\share\themes
(I’m assuming you installed pidgin to Program Files folder).
Then I went to pidgin plugins -> GTK+ Theme Control and reloaded the gtkrc file.
It all works now.
The only thing that “local installation of gtk+” means is that pidgin no longer uses a sysyem wide gtk+. Thus you have to install themes to Pidgin folder.
Hope that helps
Thanks a lot buddy..!
this tutorial helped