Buddy Icons

This page provides information about various aspects of buddy icons (also known as "avatars" or "contact pictures"):

• Setting your own buddy icon
• Setting your own animated buddy icon
• Setting an icon for a contact
• Removing a set icon for a contact
• Where icons are saved.

Setting your own buddy icon

Adium supports a buddy icon on most services.

If you want to set an icon on all your accounts (a global icon):

1. Choose Preferences from the Adium menu.
2. Click on Personal.
3. Set the icon.

If you want to set a different icon for a specific account:

1. Choose Preferences from the Adium menu.
2. Click on Accounts.
3. Double-click on the account.
4. Click on the Personal tab.
5. Click on “Use this icon:”.
6. Set the icon.

Note: Changing the global icon won't change any accounts to which you've assigned their own icon. If you'd like those accounts to use the global icon instead, you'll need to edit each one as described above and set it back to “Use global icon”.

There are two ways to set the icon:

Drag-and-drop

Drag an image or image file into the image well above the "Choose Icon..." button.

Drag-and-drop is the only way to set animated buddy icons and keep the animation.

Image Picker

1. Click on "Choose Icon...".
2. Drag a file into the Image Picker, or click "Choose..." and open an image file.
3. If you want, use the slider to crop the image.
4. Click OK.

You cannot use the Image Picker to set animated buddy icons. The animation will be stripped.

Setting your own animated buddy icon

Adium supports AIM and Jabber animated buddy icons in the form of .gif files. To set an animated buddy icon, drag the .gif file from the Finder into the image well in the Personal tab of your account's settings. Note that you must drag the file into the image well; you will not be able to use the animation of the icon if you use the Image Picker or press the Choose Icon button to select it.

AIM buddy icons must be between 48x48 and 50x50 pixels, Jabber buddy icons have a size limit of 96x96. When an image is resized, its animation is lost, so if Adium has to resize your image, you will lose its animation. AIM animated buddy icons therefore can not be more than 50x50 pixels, Jabber animated icons no more than 96x96.

Setting an icon for a contact

(overriding whatever icon they may have chosen):

1. Get Info on the contact by selecting the contact then choosing Get Info from the Contact menu
2. Double click the icon space in the top-lefthand corner of the window
3. Select an icon
4. Preserving transparency of an icon follows the same rules as setting animated buddy icons

Removing a set icon for a contact

1. Click on the contact in question
2. Press Delete / Backspace

Where icons are saved

Icons, once retrieved, are cached at ~/Library/Caches/Adium/Default.

Recent icons set via the icon picker (both for contacts and for yourself) are cached at ~/Library/Images/iChat Recent Pictures, and such recent icons are shared with iChat.

Icons should be retrieved automatically from your contacts when you sign on and when contacts change icons. In AIM, exchanging two messages with a contact may be necessary for the icon to be retrieved, depending upon what messaging client the contact is using. On some services, getting Info on a contact via Get Info may trigger an icon retrieval.