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