Using a theme in pidgin in windows

Question

Hi I am trying to apply a theme to Pidgin in Windows 7 but cannot find out how. I looked here which tells me to place them in:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\share\themes

but that didn't work, so I tried:

C:\Users\Jonathan\AppData\Roaming\.purple\GTK\2.0\share\themes

To no avail. Where do I put them or is there a plugin to do this? The option appears to be available in preferences but iI don't know where to put them so it can detect them.

Answer 1

Have you tried restarting the app after putting the themes in the folder? Sometimes, applications only scan certain plugins or themes folders when they are started.

Answer 2

Pidgin use to come with a GTK application in which you could select from any of the GTK themes and change your pidgin theme. For some reason unknown to me after pidgin 2.7 it started using a private GTK library and not using the GTK themes the way it did previously. I have only found this information by reading around the net and on the official pidgin wiki so if this info is incorrect I apologize. I am dissappointed by this as well as many people are Im sure because pidgin looks like garbage as an application. At work I use a mac and I have adium and it is much much much much nicer.

Answer 3

The instructions you use are speaking about the GTK theme, which only affects the buttons/menus/other controls. (And the GTK theme is set in ~/.gtkrc-2.0 in case you want to change that too.)

Smiley themes should be installed to ~/.purple/smileys/ (%AppData%\.purple\smileys\)

Answer 4

As Jesse alludes to, your gtkrc is found in C:\Program Files\pidgin\gtk\etc\gtk-2.0 according to the What is a gtkrc file and where can I find it? FAQ entry.

See also: How do I change to look and feel?

Answer 5

I know this question is years old, but I stubmled across it recently. Here is a newer tutorial that uses Windows 7 and Pidgin 2.7.9 (which does not come with the GTK stuff installed)

http://www.techjawa.com/2010/11/02/guide-theme-pidgin-in-windows-updated/

Answer 6

Thanks for the last update. Got me in the right direction.

However for Pidgin Portable, one needs to follow http://portableapps.com/node/23728 Look at the more detailed instructions in the message thread below the main explanation.