Hey folks,

just a quick note to inform you about some updates to our documentation. We’ve added articles about the following topics:
– Adium’s “Events” system
– Visual notifications (Notification Center, Growl)
– Password-protecting Adium
– Email notification

We hope they’re useful to you.

We have released Adium 1.5.4. It features support for Mountain Lion’s Notification Center among other changes (full list).

Notification Center support
Adium 1.5.4 now supports Mountain Lion’s Notification Center. By default, notifications are shown for a couple of events. You can add and remove notifications in Adium’s “Events” preferences (see our documentation on and for details.)

People have asked us how Adium decides between Notification Center and Growl on OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” (especially with Growl.app installed) so here is an explanation from our very own Stephen Holt:

1. Growl.app is installed, and the user has configured it to NOT use Notification Center:
Notifications work as before. Notification tickets are sent to Growl.app which performs actions and displays notifications as configured by the user
2. Growl.app is installed, and the user has configured it to use Notification Center:
Growl.framework detects this state from within the app and notifications are sent directly to NC. Additionally, notification tickets are sent to Growl which performs any associated actions. Growl.app displays nothing.
3. Growl.app is not installed:
Growl.framework detects this state from within the app and notifications are sent directly to NC. Nothing else is done.

Please note that only Growl.app version 2 or newer can be set to use Notification Center.

We are very happy to announce the release of Adium 1.5. This release includes user interface improvements, bug fixes and many changes under the hood – a year and a half of development effort by volunteers new and old.

Changes under the hood
This release requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 and an Intel Mac. It is the first Adium release to feature 64-bit support. This means that you will need to update any plugins you have installed (notably Skype). As always, these can be found on our xtras site.

New icons
Bogdan Mihaiciuc contributed a great set of icons which you will notice all across Adium: in the preferences, in the chat window and in the Transcript Viewer.

Improved Transcript Viewer
The Transcript Viewer was polished to look native on modern versions of OS X. “Next”/”Previous” buttons were added for highlighted search terms within a transcript (similar to Safari). Stephen Holt completely rewrote the log indexer making indexing faster and searching more accurate.

Other various user interface improvements
Our dock icon now uses a shiny round badge when on Lion as well as better looking overlays. The “Get Info” window’s appearance was relieved of many visual glitches. The contact list’s icon menu has been updated to look native on recent versions of Mac OS X. The “About Adium” window was also updated (credits for its graphics go to Mike Houben & Paul Wilde).

Our iTunes and Address Book integration is more flexible and easier to configure using tokens.

Updated Growl support
Adium 1.5 also includes a change to how we show notifications. The Growl application got a major update (version 1.3) and is available on the Mac App Store for $1.99. But to allow you to still get notifications for free, we have enabled showing Growl notifications even if the application is not installed. This feature is called Mist:

You can fully customize when these notifications are shown. See our documentation on and for details.

However, if you want to use a different skin or use some of the more advanced features of Growl, you will have to either buy the application from the Mac App Store, or get an older and free version from http://growl.info/downloads.

Libpurple changes
We have also updated libpurple to 2.10.0. Regrettably, that means we have had to remove support for QQ. QQ was removed from libpurple as it had not been updated and was known to not work for a long time, which left us no choice but to remove it as well. If you are brave, there is an unofficial plugin available on http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=8226 which aims to bring support back. 🙂

Support and development
As always, if you find a bug or have a question, please see the in-app help or the online Help page.

Adium is free, open source software. If you’d like to help us out in any way, please find out how you can contribute or donate to support the project.

When Adium 1.1.4 prompts you to update Growl and you accept, if System Preferences is not running and you have Growl 0.7.x or earlier installed, you will end up seeing an error from System Preferences that the Growl preference pane could not be loaded. Don’t fear! Just quit System Preferences and reopen it to find your working Growl 1.1.2 installation.

This is a bug with the Growl installation process which has been fixed for the next version. 🙂