Howto: Configure Pidgin for Google Talk

[FakeOutdoorsman]

Note: This post is very out of date. See the official Google instructions on how to do this: How do I configure Pidgin for Google Talk?

Pidgin, formerly known as GAIM, can be configured to connect to Google Talk.

1) The first time you open Pidgin you will see the welcome window.

2) Click Add.

3)In the Add Account window, add the following:

Protocol: XMPP (This used to be "Jabber" in GAIM)
Screen name: your Google Talk screen name without @gmail.com
Server: gmail.com
Password: If you want Pidgin to log in automatically, enter your Google Talk password and check the Remember password box. The password is stored unencrypted on your computer under the .purple directory in your home folder, so you may not want Pidgin to remember your password for security reasons. It should look like the first attached image below.

4) Click the Advanced tab and add the following:

Connect server: talk.google.com

It should look like the second attached image below.

5) Click Save and you're done.

[chipwhisperer]

Hi,

Thanks for the tutorial! However, I'm running Edgy and I get the error that

<username>/Home disconnected

Server requires TLS/SSL for login. No TLS/SSL support found.


Any idea what I can do? I tried to click the force SSL option but that did not seem to work.

Thanks for any help!

[FakeOutdoorsman]

My guess is that the necessary ports are being blocked by your firewall, proxy, or router.

In order to connect to Google Talk and start sending IMs, you'll need to enable TCP connections to talk.google.com on port 5222, or on port 443. From What ports does Google Talk require?

You can test to see if you can connect to talk.google.com, port 5222 with the following command in a terminal:

telnet talk.google.com 5222

A successful connection will look like this:

telnet talk.google.com 5222
Trying 72.14.253.125...
Connected to talk.l.google.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
^Connection closed by foreign host.

[Elrohir]

Hi,

Thanks for the tutorial! However, I'm running Edgy and I get the error that

<username>/Home disconnected

Server requires TLS/SSL for login. No TLS/SSL support found.


Any idea what I can do? I tried to click the force SSL option but that did not seem to work.

Thanks for any help!

did you built Pidgin from source? in that case you need a SSL Library, I used Mozilla's SSL Library, libnspr-dev, libssl-dev, and libnss-dev... not sure why those three worked together, but they did... maybe just a combination of two of them or not sure... but those are the libs I installed when I compiled and worked... cheers!

PS: If you need help with the source compiling, PM me and I'll help you step by step...

[morneHeru]

Thanks FakeOutdoorsman, works great for me

[Fylk]

Hey, thanks. I was wondering why I wasn't seeing Jabber under the add accounts.

[chipwhisperer]

Hey everyone,

thanks for all of your suggestions! It looks like it was a combo of both FakeOutdoorsman's and Elrohir's sugesstions, but now it's working fine. Thanks all! I'm grateful for your help!

[dnoble]

If you're using Google Talk with a Google Apps domain, you'll need to do a couple things differently:

Configure Pidgin for a Google Apps domain

[macness]

I upgraded from GAIM and all my user settings ported over from my old .gaim file so all my accounts were added automatically.

However, My Google Talk would continually get SSL Handshake failed. After a few hours the following worked for me.

1. Delete the old Google Talk/Jabber account that gets ported over
2. Recreate it using Google's instructions WORD FOR WORD
3. go to the advanced tab (as mentioned before in this tread) and change the server to talk.google.com (not in Google's instructions)

Happy Trails.

[kanna1620]

I upgraded from GAIM and all my user settings ported over from my old .gaim file so all my accounts were added automatically.

However, My Google Talk would continually get SSL Handshake failed. After a few hours the following worked for me.

1. Delete the old Google Talk/Jabber account that gets ported over
2. Recreate it using Google's instructions WORD FOR WORD
3. go to the advanced tab (as mentioned before in this tread) and change the server to talk.google.com (not in Google's instructions)

Happy Trails.

I did what you said with no luck. I got the following error.
Read Error
What to do?