Empathy .. looks good .. one question though

**ubrox** · October 19th, 2008

Did anyone figure out how to disable chat history?

**ariel** · April 28th, 2009

Originally Posted by kalyanakrishna

Did anyone figure out how to disable chat history?

I'm wondering the same - I can't find any setting to disable this

**alre** · April 28th, 2009

If i am right there is no possibility to disable the chat history at the moment. Empathy logs conversations by default.

**tone77** · November 6th, 2009

bump, has anyone figured out how to delete chat history yet?

**rarsa** · November 11th, 2009

This is one of those things that I have no clue how the developers thought was a good idea.

In this day and age where privacy is important forcing to log all the conversations?

Well, here is how to delete them. You may create a script to click on when you want to delete them or you may turn it into a cron process to delete de logs at regular intervals.

The logs are under

Code:

~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

To remove the logs just execute:

Code:

rm -fr ~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

I tried making that folder read-only but Empathy chokes and closes down.

Setting that option should not be difficult. Hopefuly someone is working on that.

Edit:
I just noticed that in another system where I have Empathy 2.26.1, the logs are saved to a different location.

Code:

rm -fr ~/.gnome2/Empathy/logs

**mr_steve** · November 11th, 2009

Looks like the Empathy developers are working on this, and there is a patch which at least adds a somewhat-hidden configuration option to disable logging. If I can get the patch to work for the current version of Empathy in Ubuntu, I'll roll up some patched packages and put them in my PPA.

Watch this space for updates...

**mlnease** · November 17th, 2009

This is one of those things that I have no clue how the developers thought was a good idea.

In this day and age where privacy is important forcing to log all the conversations?

Well, here is how to delete them. You may create a script to click on when you want to delete them or you may turn it into a cron process to delete de logs at regular intervals.

The logs are under

Code:

~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

To remove the logs just execute:

Code:

rm -fr ~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

Thanks, Rarsa--very helpful, worked a treat.

mike

**koolander143** · August 17th, 2010

Originally Posted by tone77

bump, has anyone figured out how to delete chat history yet?

You can do it through Rarsa's suggestion:

The logs are under

Code:
~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

To remove the logs just execute:

Code:
rm -fr ~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

...or you can go about it this way if you feel unsure about using a terminal.

1. Click on PLACES, then HOME FOLDER

2. Press CTRL + H (this will show you hidden files)

3. Then, open these folders or double-click .local/share/Empathy/logs

4. In logs you'll see your IM clients you have added. Click on the folder(s) and you'll see each contact you have had a conversation with. If you double click on a contact you'll see the saved conversation file.

5. At this point you can just select the file and delete or you can select your contact's folder and delete it.

I, completely, understand why people don't want their conversations stored. I hate my conversations to be stored somewhere too. Hopefully the Ubuntu developers can fix this on Empathy. I hope this was helpful.

**potatan** · September 23rd, 2010

For anyone still interested, this bug (or lack of a feature) will be fixed in Ubuntu Maverick, 10.10 due out next month.

See last page of
https://bugs.launchpad.net/empathy/+bug/411898

**marbss** · January 4th, 2011

Originally Posted by koolander143

You can do it through Rarsa's suggestion:

The logs are under

Code:
~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

To remove the logs just execute:

Code:
rm -fr ~/.local/share/Empathy/logs

...or you can go about it this way if you feel unsure about using a terminal.

1. Click on PLACES, then HOME FOLDER

2. Press CTRL + H (this will show you hidden files)

3. Then, open these folders or double-click .local/share/Empathy/logs

4. In logs you'll see your IM clients you have added. Click on the folder(s) and you'll see each contact you have had a conversation with. If you double click on a contact you'll see the saved conversation file.

5. At this point you can just select the file and delete or you can select your contact's folder and delete it.

I, completely, understand why people don't want their conversations stored. I hate my conversations to be stored somewhere too. Hopefully the Ubuntu developers can fix this on Empathy. I hope this was helpful.

Thanks this worked wonderfully on 10.10. Thank you!

Ubuntu developers: Consider bringing back Pidgin-- why? Empathy lacks chat log deletion and lacks email notifications.