Support for local Matrix bridges?

Pidgin
1

Hello!

I used to be a happy Pidgin user, but with most of my contacts now on Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram and Signal, I haven’t used the program in many years. I’m glad to see it’s still alive and well (with a new GTK4 version in the works I can see!) but the plugins for proprietary platforms unfortunately don’t seem maintained?

And now I just thought: there are actually up-to-date and supported open source projects supporting these protocols! They are maybe not Purple plugins, but they are Matrix bridges.

For instance, GitHub - mautrix/meta: A Matrix-Facebook Messenger and Instagram DM puppeting bridge. for Facebook and Instagram, or GitHub - mautrix/signal: A Matrix-Signal puppeting bridge for Signal, and there are many more.

I’m not a developer, so I have no idea what this would take, but as a user, it would be amazing if there was a way to use Matrix bridges locally within Pidgin, just like Purple plugins! It might mean translating Matrix instructions to and from Purple ones, so kind of bridging bridges if that makes sense, but if there’s any way to make this work, that’s be very nice!

Anyway, just opening the topic in case it hasn’t been talked about before :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

To use matrix bridges in Pidgin you’d have to use a Matrix account. There was a Matrix plugin that worked for awhile but got abandoned. That said we are looking at adding first party support for matrix in Pidgin 3, but that’s going to be out a bit yet.