Pidgin 3.0 Alpha 2 2.96.0 has been released! - Pidgin - Instant Messaging Freedom's Discourse

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Pidgin 3.0 Alpha 2 2.96.0 has been released!

Pidgin

release

grim

July 1, 2026, 3:41am

We are ecstatic to announce that we have released the second alpha version of Pidgin 3.0!!! This release has an official version number of 2.96.0. 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 be found on SourceForge and should 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.

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 not been polished at all, and there are so, so many bugs. As such we are asking that packagers please do not package this for your users yet as the potential support requests will be too much for us to handle at this time.

Looking forward, Alpha 3 is scheduled for 2026-09-30 and will have a version number of 2.97.0 .

We have a bunch of tickets entered for Alpha 3 and you can keep an eye on the Burn down Chart for Alpha 3 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 the release until it’s actually completed.

If you would like monthly updates, be sure to check out the state-of-the-bird posts!

Highlights

This has been a very busy cycle. Like usual, we didn’t get through quite everything I wanted to, but we still made a lot of really good progress!!

Notifications

We removed the purple-toast and notification-sound plugins and built support for them directly into Pidgin. You can configure everything from the preferences with additional settings coming in the future.

notification preferences page640×480 20.9 KB

Conversation Member Avatars

We now display the avatars of conversation members. There’s still a lot of work to do regarding avatars, but this adds a nice touch to the user interface.

conversation member avatars being displayed950×450 31.3 KB

Scheduler User Interface

Purple 3 has a scheduler built-in to simplify tasks and let the user know what’s going on. For example, this is where you will be able to see how long before a re-connection attempt is made for an account, but that isn’t implemented quite yet.

scheduler user interface373×480 17.2 KB

Zulip Direct Messages

We didn’t capture a screenshot, but direct messages and group direct messages are now implemented in Zulip.

QR Code Support

Many protocols now allow users to log in by scanning a QR Code. In Pidgin 2, people have implemented this with some ingenuity involving the requests API, but we now added direct support for it in Purple and the user interfaces.

While this works, it’s a stop gap until we get the new authentication API finalized and implemented.

an example qr code that just contains text251×355 6.5 KB

an example qr code that contains a uri501×623 11.9 KB

ChangeLog

As always the complete list of every change in this release is below.

We have a new ChangeLog format with this release. We’ve removed the separate sections and instead put the section at the start of the change message. We’ve also reordered the change information like author, review request, and related issues. If you have any comments, be sure to leave them below.

Flatpak: Update the runtime to GNOME 50

Gary Kramlich, RR 4509

General: Simplify compiler warning flag setup

Elliott Sales de Andrade, RR 4505

Purple: Standardize credential provider management

Elliott Sales de Andrade, RR 4515

Purple: Plug a few memory leaks in some managers

Gary Kramlich, RR 4522

Purple: normalize the ConversationManagerSeagullBackend resource paths

Gary Kramlich, RR 4521

Purple: Update the contact manager seagull backend test to use the test ui

Gary Kramlich, RR 4517

Purple: Add additional parameters to the ContactManagerBackend load vfuncs

Gary Kramlich, RR 4519

Purple: Remove AccountManagerNoopBackend

Gary Kramlich, RR 4518

Purple: remove BadgeManager.get_default

Gary Kramlich, RR 4523

Purple: Remove the rest of the get_default methods for managers

Gary Kramlich, RR 4524

Purple: Implement...