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I'm presently using pidgin, but it doesn't adequately notify me when I receive a message. I know I can get it to make noise, and pop up a notification, but I very specifically would like the icon to flash or wiggle (or something) on the sidebar until I check it. Is there a way I can get pidgin to do this/and or is there a different program that does? It needs to support MSN.

(Edit: Can someone create the "messenger" tag please?)

mpen
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  • Empathy, emesene, aMSN.. – Uri Herrera Nov 07 '12 at 00:23
  • @UriHerrera: Those all take advantage of the unity interface properly? I wasn't very impressed with them the last time I tried them, but if they do what I need, I can give them another shot... – mpen Nov 07 '12 at 03:14

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Pidgin does have a icon that runs in the Notification Area but all but the default applets are disabled. They can be enabled one at at time or you can enable all.

To do this you will need to add applications to the whitelist.

To whitelist all applications enter the following into a terminal...

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

To enable only certain applications enter the following into a terminal

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['YOUR_APPLICATION']"

so for pidgin only it would be 

    gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['pidgin']"

once that is done you ca have the notification icon blink on new messages, just right click on the icon and then select blink on new message, the notification icon will then blink on a new message. enter image description here

The following page is my source for the commands to whitelist applications in the Unity panel, it also includes a GUI way to edit this and other settings via dconf Editor but use this tool carefully you can really bork your setting with it.

The source page is... http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/how-to-re-enable-notification-area.html

NOTE: The above directions will cause the icon to blink on a new IM but not an email; you didn't specify but as you didn't mention email I assumed that you meant IM's... as far as I know there is no way to get it to blink with an email, you can only get the momentary wiggle of the Icon in the launcher for a email...

TrailRider
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  • Yes, I meant IMs. I'm using Thunderbird for email. Will this cause it to blink on the top-bar/notification area or the side-bar? I was hoping for the sidebar as it's bigger and more noticable, but even the top-bar is a step up. Will try this soon, thanks. – mpen Nov 07 '12 at 03:13
  • @Mark this will cause it to blink on the top bar, I don't think that there is a way to get the side bar to wiggle for more than the second or so that it does... – TrailRider Nov 07 '12 at 03:32
  • Thunderbird shows a count of new emails, why can't pidgin show a count of new messages? Even that would be better than nothing. – mpen Nov 07 '12 at 16:28
  • I've added pidgin to the whitelist and set "Show system tray icon" to "Always" in the preferences, but it still doesn't show. – mpen Nov 07 '12 at 21:41
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    @Mark You may need to log out and back in again to restart Unity with the new settings. If that doesn't work then I'm confused, I didn't need to do anything else to get my tray icon for pidgin to work, nor have I seen any instructions anywhere else that show any different... – TrailRider Nov 08 '12 at 01:54