Pidgin > Install

Install

Pidgin

Windows

This version of Pidgin downloads an appropriate version of GTK. GTK is now installed locally for Pidgin, and not system-wide, thus Pidgin will not interfere with other GTK apps on your system.

If you would like to have GTK included in the installer, we have an offline installer that bundles everything except spell-checking dictionaries.

If you’re looking for a portable version that doesn’t need installation, we also have that available.

Linux

We do not provide pre-built packages for Linux and Unix distributions. We recommend installing Pidgin using your operating system’s standard package management tool.

If your operating system doesn’t provide a pre-built package, or if their pre-built package is out of date and you want to upgrade, then you can try building from source.

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt update
sudo apt install pidgin

FreeBSD

pkg install pidgin

macOS

For a native macOS experience we recommend Adium, which uses libpurple (the core of Pidgin) for much of its protocol support.

If you’re sure you want to use Pidgin on macOS, you may find the packages provided through Homebrew, pkgin, Fink or Macports more convenient than compiling from source. Please note, we do not provide support for issues related to installing Homebrew, pkgin, Fink, Macports, or their packages of Pidgin. Contact those projects directly with questions or concerns.

If you’re sure you want to use Pidgin on macOS and you don’t want to use Homebrew, Fink or Macports, you can download the Pidgin source and compile.

Source

This download is for the source code of Pidgin 2.14.13.

If you want to use Pidgin, you should either download and use our Windows installer or look for pre-built packages from your operating system distribution.

If you are looking to modify Pidgin, you may want to look at our instructions for contributing code from our repository.

Older versions

If you need binaries for older versions of Pidgin, visit our package repository main page. That is also where you can find the checksums for each file and their corresponding gpg signatures.

Finch

Finch is a text-based IM client written in C which uses the ncurses toolkit.