Documentation

Creating accounts

To use Adium, you'll need an account on one or more of the IM services that it supports. Before proceeding, you should either have an existing name and password, or you need to sign up for an account on the service of your choice. Note that Adium will offer to register your account on the Jabber service when setting up a Jabber account.

You'll only be able to communicate with contacts (also called 'buddies' or 'users') on a service if you have an account on that service. In other words, you'll need an AIM account to talk to AIM contacts, an MSN account to talk to MSN contacts, etc. You can have as many accounts, on as many services, as you want, and they can all be signed on with Adium simultaneously.

Adding your account to Adium

To add your account to Adium (once you have signed up for it):

  1. Choose Preferences from the Adium menu (This will be opened for you automatically the first time Adium runs).
  2. Select the Accounts preferences pane (This is the first pane, already selected the first time Adium runs).
  3. Click the plus (+) button.
  4. Select the service you want to use.
  5. Enter your account name (the specific identifier for which varies by service, e.g. "screen name," "GTalk ID," or "username") and password (as well, as if required by the panel, the server and port) in the Account panel. If you enter a password here, it will be stored securely in the Mac OS X keychain, and Adium will continue to use it for future connections. If you do not enter a password, you will be prompted each time you connect.
  6. Enter your alias and choose an icon in the Personal panel. See Contact icons for more information.
  7. Service-specific:
    • In the Options panel check the appropriate boxes, enter your resource and your available/away priority for XMPP,
    • In the Privacy panel, choose whether you would like to send typing notices and choose your preferred encryption level.
    • In the Proxy panel, setup your proxy configuration if you need to (if you don't know what proxy configuration details to enter you don't need to enter any).
  8. Click OK.

Adium will automatically connect the account for you, prompting for a password if needed (as described above). In the future, the account will be connected when Adium loads. To find how to change this behaviour and more information on setting your status see Setting your status.

Signing up for an account

(Some of the following are external links)

  1. Free Services
  2. Paid Services
    • AOL - compatible with AIM, ICQ
    • MobileMe (formerly known as .Mac), compatible with AIM, ICQ
  3. Non-English Free Services
  4. Corporate Services