As beautiful as Pidgin’s OSD notifications are, I find they become a nuisance after a short while. They don’t seem to go away when you mark yourself as busy or have another applications, such as a movie, running at full screen. On top of that I generally don’t chat with the majority of the contacts on my MSN list very often so I really don’t need to be notified every time they log in.

Strangely, the option to disable the OSD notifications isn’t in the preferences screen for Pidgin. I was a little stumped by this as I expected it to be there. So I did a bit of digging and discovered it was actually a plugin which is enabled by default. To disable it, simply follow these steps:

• Select Tools from the main menu
• Click Plugins
• Uncheck Libnotify Popups
• Click the Close button

Now you’ll no longer be nagged at every time one of your contacts logs into the network.

Brad Fettes

A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 18 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.