Pidgin 3.0 Alpha 3 2.97.0 has been released!

grim October 1, 2026, 3:56am 1

We are ecstatic to announce that we have released the third alpha version of Pidgin 3.0!!! This release has an official version number of 2.97.0. We will continue releasing in this fashion until we are ready for 3.0.0 which will be the release we consider ready for end users. You can read more about our development phases here.

The release can still be found on SourceForge but we have a new CDN thanks to Fastly and the release can be found at fastly.imfreedom.org. It will also show up on Flathub Beta shortly.

If you don’t want to use the Flathub Beta method, there are build instructions in the `README.md` for building a Flatpak locally or installing into a meson devenv. Both methods avoid installing directly to your OS installation which is the preferred method as there is no easy way to uninstall the application at this time.

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-about-1)About

Just like the previous releases, this is a timed release. It is a snapshot of what we currently have and is something we think other tinkerers and developers may want to start playing with. But again, it is not meant for end users.

Most things are not implemented, the user interface has had little to no polish, and there are so, so many bugs. As such we are asking packagers to please not package this for your users at this time as the potential support requests will be too much for us to handle.

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-highlights-2)Highlights

This cycle has seen a lot of maintenance and not so many user facing changes, but there are a few to highlight!

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-new-presence-icons-3)New Presence Icons

The one and only Hylke Bons has graciously provided a new set of presence/status icons for us. You can see them in the contact list screenshot below. Sorry I forgot to include the offline user

contacts list showing all presence icons as emblems1000×500 53.8 KB

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-account-reconnection-4)Account Reconnection

Accounts will now automatically be reconnected after they get disconnected. This works on a simple static 1 minute timer between attempts right now and will probably be enhanced in the future. Unlike Pidgin 2 reconnection attempts will be made forever.

One of the cooler parts, is that this is now visible in the scheduler, which has not been polished at all as you can see below.

the scheduler window showing that demoing account is scheduled to be reconnected at a specific time444×530 12.7 KB

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-message-history-5)Message History

We finally created the PurpleHistory class which is how we represent messages in a conversation now. There is still a lot of work to do here, but protocols can now access this via the Purple.Conversation:history property to find messages as well as add additional.

There will be API in the future for the user interface to ask the protocol to load messages, but we aren’t quite there yet.

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-plugins-dialog-6)Plugins Dialog

We moved the plugins back to a separate dialog. It will probably get updated after some changes in GPlugin but you can take a look at it below.

the new plugin dialog486×530 34.4 KB

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-zulip-7)Zulip

We removed the `in-development` tag from the Zulip protocol plugin. There is still a long way to go there, including adding support for channels, but DM’s have been stable enough that we felt comfortable removing the tag.

This means that it now shows up in the protocol list when creating a new account by default.

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-changelog-8)ChangeLog

The full list of change can be found below.

Full ChangeLog

Purple: Add a Conversation:notify-level property
Pidgin: Only notify new messages if the conversation is marked as such
Purple: Add notify-level support to ConversationManagerSeagullBackend
Purple: Remove Connection.connect
Purple: Fix a missed documentation update in CredentialManager
Purple: Make ProtocolConversation.refresh an async pair
Purple: replace PROTOCOL\_CONVERSATION\_DOMAIN with PROTOCOL\_CONVERSATION\_ERROR
Purple: Replace PROTOCOL\_CONTACTS\_DOMAIN with PROTOCOL\_CONTACTS\_ERROR
Purple: Convert PROTOCOL\_MANAGER\_DOMAIN to PROTOCOL\_MANAGER\_ERROR
Purple: Convert WHITEBOARD\_MANAGER\_DOMAIN to WHITEBOARD\_MANAGER\_ERROR
Purple: Make Connection.disconnect an async pair
General: Put developer-related tests in a ‘dev’ suite
Zulip: fix some potential remote crash bugs
Purple: replace all uses of g\_new with g\_new0
Demo: replace g\_new with g\_new0
Purple: Add a History object
Purple: Update conversation to use the new history object
Purple: The start of ProtocolConversation.query\_history API
Purple: remove strreplace
Purple: Add History.lookup\_message\_async and History.lookup\_message\_finish
Purple: Remove the menu API
Pidgin: Add the plugins menu back
Pidgin: Create a basic plugins dialog
Pidgin: Remove the plugins display item from the display window
Pidgin: Remove a bunch of unused menus
Pidgin: Remove the whiteboard implementation
Purple: Remove the whiteboard API
Pidgin: Fix invalid read when quitting the application
Purple remove util\_init and util\_uninit
Purple: Add History.remove\_message\_async and History.remove\_message\_finish
Purple: Rename History.add\_async to History.add\_message\_async
Purple: Overhauled the Message documentation
IRCv3: Use the Ibis.Client::stopped signal to detect disconnections
Purple: depend on birb 0.9.0 and remove the util API
Purple: Don’t have contact manager backends load all contacts
Purple: Clean up ContactInfo
Purple: Additional cleanups for ContactInfo
Purple: Add a last-updated property to ContactInfo
Purple: The start of vfuncs for members
Pidgin: Remove the old voice and video stuff
Pidgin: Remove the startup presence preference ui
Purple: Remove the startup presence settings
Purple: Create a proper error domain for Contact
General: Skip looking for gi-docgen if documentation is disabled
General: Update libspelling wrap to 0.4.10
Purple: Update ContactManagerSeagullBackend to handle the last-updated property
Purple: Organize the code in purpleconversation.\[ch\]
Purple: Remove some unused and stubbed out API from Conversation
Purple: Add a has-password property to Conversation
Purple: Update the Seagull Conversation backend for the has-password property
General: use the python version that meson is using for the postconf script
Purple: Pass all public headers to glib-mkenums
Purple: Make a real error domain for conversation errors
Purple: Move the plugins error domain to a proper error domain
KeyChainAccess: Return NULL when a password isn’t found
Zulip: Remove the in-development tag from the protocol
Purple: Clear up some documentation on CredentialProvider.read\_password\_finish
Dependencies: Depend on Seagull 0.8.2
Purple: Remove a stray character from a doc comment in History
Purple: Add a collection for handling conversation threads
Purple: Have Conversation propagate the signals from Threads
General: Disable i18n.merge\_file on netbsd
General: Remove DigitalOcean as a sponsor
Purple: Make AccountManager automatically reconnect accounts
General: Mark gschemas with the runtime tag
Purple: Use UTC time everywhere
Purple: Clear typing timeout at beginning of callback
Purple: Add archived properties to Conversation
Purple: Add the Conversation archive properties to the seagull backend
IRCv3: Depend on Ibis 0.16.1
General: Depend on HASL 0.6.0
Convey: mark ubuntu-resolute for cleaning
Purple: Remove the Threads collection
Purple: Cleanup the ConversationManager Seagull Schema
Flatpak: Use GNOME 51 and remove KWallet
Purple: Cleanup the schema for ContactManagerSeagullBackend
Purple: Generate Account:id during construction
Purple: Make ContactInfo:id not nullable
Purple: Restore the NOT NULL constraints to ContactManagerSeagullBackend
Purple: Restore the NOT NULL constraints to ConversationManagerSeagullBackend
General: Depend on Birb 0.11.0
General: move our subprojects to the Fastly URLs
Pidgin: Make the content of a message selectable
Purple: Clean up and modernize Contact
Pidgin: Add the status icon to the contact list
Pidgin: Import the new status icons from Hylke Bons
Pidgin: Make the contact list remember if it should show offline contacts

Gary Kramlich, RR 4830

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-looking-forward-9)Looking Forward

Alpha 4 is scheduled for 2026-10-29 and will have a version number of 2.98.0. We are moving from quarterly to monthly releases as we get closer and closer to a final release and have chosen the last Thursday of the month to be our release dates as historically Thursday night was our release night.

We have a bunch of tickets entered for Alpha 4 and you can keep an eye on the Burn down Chart for Alpha 4 to stay informed.

As always, priorities and possibilities can and will change, so even if something is listed for this release that doesn’t mean it will be in that release until it’s actually completed.

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-thank-you-10)Thank You!

Thank you everyone for your continued support of Pidgin, it means a lot to us!

If you’re interested in contributing, you can check out our Contributing Guide to get started.

Also be sure to check out our merch store and if you’re feeling generous, you can donate to the project from our Donation Page.

1 Like

Pidgin 3.0 Alpha 3 2.97.0 has been released!

Pidgin 3.0 Alpha 3 2.97.0 has been released!

Pidgin 3.0 Alpha 3 2.97.0 has been released!

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-about-1)About

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-highlights-2)Highlights

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-new-presence-icons-3)New Presence Icons

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-account-reconnection-4)Account Reconnection

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-message-history-5)Message History

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-plugins-dialog-6)Plugins Dialog

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-zulip-7)Zulip

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-changelog-8)ChangeLog

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-looking-forward-9)Looking Forward

[](https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-alpha-3-2-97-0-has-been-released/436#p-1160-thank-you-10)Thank You!

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