Pidgin, previously known as Gaim, is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. Pidgin messenger is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, SILC, Gadu-Gadu, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.

Pidgin users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features.

A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Qtopia (Sharp Zaurus and iPaq).

Pidgin integrates well with GNOME 2 and KDE 3.1's system tray, as well as Windows's own system tray. This allows you to work with Pidgin without requiring the buddy list window to be up at all times.

Pidgin is under constant development, and releases are usually frequent. The latest news regarding Pidgin can be found on the news page.


Product's homepage

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

Finch:
· Fix compilation on OpenBSD.

AIM and ICQ:
· Fix remotely-triggerable crashes by validating strings in a few messages related to buddy list management. Thanks to Evgeny Boger for reporting this! (#14682)

Bonjour:
· IPv6 fixes (Linus Lüssing)

Gadu-Gadu:
· Fix problems linking against GnuTLS. (#14544)

IRC:
· Fix a memory leak when admitting UTF-8 text with a non-UTF-8 primary encoding. (#14700)

Jabber:
· Fix crashes and memory leaks when receiving malformed voice and video requests. Thanks to Thijs Alkemade for reporting this!

Sametime:
· Separate "username" and "server" when adding new Sametime accounts. (#14608)
· Fix compilation in Visual C++. (#14608)

SILC:
· Fix CVE-2011-3594, by UTF-8 validating incoming messages before passing them to glib or libpurple. Identified by Diego Bauche Madero from IOActive. (#14636)

Yahoo!:
· Fetch buddy icons in some cases where we previously weren't. (#13050)