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dx edited this page Aug 12, 2015 · 15 revisions

The purple-facebook plugin is a replacement for the builtin Facebook XMPP plugin. Facebook is in the process of shutting down their XMPP service, which will inevitably break existing support.

As part of Google Summer of Code 2015, jgeboski is working on a plugin for libpurple to support a 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.

It should be noted that this plugin is still a work in progress, and there are many things which still need to be completed. Overall, however, the plugin is largely functional and can be used as a replacement for Facebook support within Pidgin and other clients which use libpurple. See the TODO for more information on the progress of the project.

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.

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.

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

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