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Hide the Attention Button in Pidgin

Posted in Linux
Pidgin Attention button successfully hidden
Pidgin Attention button successfully hidden

Ever since the developers added the Attention button to Pidgin, one of the most common questions asked is how to remove it. I finally set some time aside to answer this question.

  • Download the plugin that does exactly this from the Pidgin developer page.
  • Install the Pidgin developer dependencies if you haven’t already:
    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-dev-tools subversion g++ pidgin-data libpurple0 libpurple-dev pidgin-dev libgtk2.0-dev

    This step is important or you’ll receive errors like the following:

    $ make
    [CC] hide_attention_button.o
    Package pidgin was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `pidgin.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
    No package 'pidgin' found
    Package purple was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `purple.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
    No package 'purple' found
    Package gobject-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gobject-2.0.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
    No package 'gobject-2.0' found
    Package gtk+-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
    Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtk+-2.0.pc'
    to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
    No package 'gtk+-2.0' found
    hide_attention_button.c:24:20: fatal error: plugin.h: No such file or directory
    compilation terminated.
    make: *** [hide_attention_button.o] Error 1
  • Drop the .c and Makefile into a folder and in a terminal run the following commands:
    make
    sudo make install

    If all went well you’ll see:

    $ make
    [CC] hide_attention_button.o
    [SHLIB] hide_attention_button.so
    $ sudo make install
    mkdir -p /`pkg-config --variable=prefix purple`/lib/purple-2
    install hide_attention_button.so /`pkg-config --variable=prefix purple`/lib/purple-2

Restart pidgin and enable the plugin under Tools – Plugins – Hide Pidgin Attention Button.

Close but not Perfect

Although this plugin really does hide your Attention button, it still exists if you hover over where it used to be:

The button is much smaller but still clickable
The button is much smaller but still clickable

At least it’s much smaller now and less likely to be accidentally clicked!