Slack with Pidgin via slack-libpurple

Pidgin is a cross platform chat program that works with many chat networks and protocols - Google Hangouts, ICQ, XMPP, etc.

Slack initially supported the standard XMPP protocol but decided to disable this handy feature in May 2018 and became yet another closed ecosystem.

If you wish to still access it via 3rd party pidgin client, slack-libpurple is one available plugin to do so. Here lies some basic instructions on how to do so on Linux, which is Ubuntu 16 at the time of writing.

• https://github.com/dylex/slack-libpurple
• https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP

Install required packages

apt-get install build-essential git libpurple-dev pkg-config

Download, compile, install. Doing so as my user, hence make install-user

cd /tmp/
git clone https://github.com/dylex/slack-libpurple
cd slack-libpurple
make
make install-user

This plugin requires an API token for auth. Go here and create one, it should be 70ish characters long:

• https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens

Finally, open Pidgin, go to Accounts-> Manage-> Add

Basic tab:

• Protocol: Slack
• Username: <your slack username>
• Host: yourworkspace.slack.com

Advanced tab:

• API Token: <xoxp-blahhhhhasdfas1231241niner>
• I checked all other options (Open chat on message, Retrieve history, Download Avatars) and they seem to work fine.