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dx edited this page Aug 15, 2017 · 15 revisions

The purple-facebook plugin is a replacement for the builtin Facebook XMPP plugin.

Basic usage

  1. Install the plugin, following either:
  2. Restart pidgin in order to load the plugin
  3. Add a new account or modify your existing one with the following details:

  • Protocol: Facebook (NOT Facebook (XMPP))

  • Username: Either your email, Facebook username, or phone number will work.

    If you previously had username@chat.facebook.com, remove the @chat.facebook.com part.

  • Password: Using an app password is highly recommended.

    (The application name it asks when creating the password doesn't matter. Unlike other messaging services, there's no need to enable two factor authentication to use app passwords)

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I check the current plugin version?

Go to Help => Plugin Information in pidgin.

Login fails, the debug window says jabber: Got a result iq with id[...]

That's an error from the XMPP plugin. You're not using this one. See step 3 above.

The plugin doesn't load on windows

Ensure you're using the libjson-glib-1.0.dll provided in the downloads section of this plugin, placed in the correct directory. If you had another one for a different plugin (for example, skypeweb), you can replace it with this one, as they are backwards compatible.

How do I "mute" a groupchat?

There's no support for the server-side "mute" feature, but this can be solved easily from pidgin.

Two methods, either blacklist a groupchat by saving it and keeping it closed:

  • Save the chat you want to mute to the buddy list
  • Mark it as persistent
  • Close it
  • It should still receive the chat messages without popping up, the chat entry in the buddy list will just display as bold

Or whitelist the chats you care about and stop everything else from opening windows:

  • Open a few chats that you're interested in and save them to the buddy list
  • Mark them as persistent.
  • Under the account settings, go to the "Advanced" tab, and uncheck "Open new group chats with incoming messages."

After upgrading the plugin, some features that should work (like image thumbnails) seem to be broken

In the pidgin accounts window, try deleting this account and re-add it. Reconnect and try again. (see this comment for the reason behind this)

If it still doesn't work, file an issue.

NB: Deleting and re-adding the account will mean you have to move all the buddies back into the groups/contacts you had moved them to previously.

I received an email/sms saying I logged in from a new location

This is normal the first time you log in.

  • The application name is shown as "facebook for android" (since this plugin connects in the same way as facebook messenger for android).
  • The IP shown in the details should match yours (unless your ISP or local network administrator requires using a proxy - if you don't know what a "proxy" is, you don't have one)
  • The location shown is approximate, and might be incorrect.
  • In the case of SMS, the notification might arrive with a delay of a few hours.

The "security" tab of the facebook settings has a few interesting sections, such as app passwords (highly recommended for extra security) and a list of current logged sessions. The ones from this plugin are listed in the "messenger" section.

History

As part of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2015, jgeboski worked on a plugin for libpurple to support the newer Facebook Messenger protocol. The plugin is implemented for the development version of libpurple, purple3, which has yet to be released. The purple-facebook project simply back-ports the purple3 plugin to purple2, which is the released version of libpurple.

As of October 18, 2015, jgeboski's GSoC work was merged into the mainline Pidgin project. It will appear in the next major release of Pidgin.

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