Custom Buddy Notifications with Pidgin
Alert yourself to events in instant messaging, such as a contact signing on or sending you a message using Buddy Pounces in Pidgin. Buddy Pounces allow you to notify yourself in a variety of ways, including playing custom sounds and running programs. We’ll show you how to setup a simple buddy pounce that will alert you when a contact signs on.
Adding a New Buddy Pounce
Open the Buddy List, hit Tools, then Buddy Pounces.
In the window that appears, hit Add.
You’ll be greeted with a New Buddy Pounce dialog. We’ll explain some of the options available.
- Account: A dropdown menu listing all of your accounts appears. Select the one with the contact that you want a new buddy pounce to be added to.
- Buddy Name: Type your contact’s name/email.
- Pounce When Buddy: Should be self explanatory. Check all the options you want special notification for.
- Action: Also self explanatory. Open an IM Window opens a new window with the contact, Pop-up a notification pops up a new notification, Send a message sends a message to the contact in question, Execute a command runs a program, and Play a sound plays a sound of your choice. If you leave Play a sound blank, it will play a different Pidgin sound.
- Pounce only when my status is not available: The action only occurs if your status is Not Available.
- Recurring: Have this action occur every time. For the purpose of having a special notification every time the contact signs on, we checked the box.
That basically outlines the options available. For our purposes, we checked Sign in under Pounce When Buddy, Open an IM Window and Play a Sound under Action, and Recurring. Hit Save and you now have a new buddy pounce.
On another note, I apologize for the drop in posting frequency, as I am busy with school and cannot dedicate as much time.
I'm Jason, the main author of Third Error, and many of the topics I'll focus on concern Windows (and applicable software), web applications, web design, and a bit of *nix (Ubuntu mainly). My computer runs Windows XP, with virtualized Ubuntu and OS X handy.