What are the best Jabber/XMPP clients for Mac OS X?

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Dec 14, 2023

Last
Updated

Adium vs Pidgin vs Jitsi

vs AstraChat vs Movim vs Fluid

Specs

Platforms

Media

Message history

Emoticons

Off the Record Messaging

License

Opensource

Video chat

End to Encription

Spell checking

Chat plugins

Notification intergation

Supported protocols

VoIP

Technology

Videoconferencing

Audio recording

Screensharing

Hosting options

Service integrations

Groups

Locationsharing

Lockable

Website

GIF

Voice message

Platforms

Windows, Linux

Media

Video send/receive, Images

Message history

Optional

Emoticons

Add-on

Off the Record Messaging

Add-on

License

GPL

Opensource

Yes

Video chat

Yes

End to Encription

Add-on

Spell checking

Yes

Chat plugins

SMS, Facebook, Discord, Skype, Telegram, WhatsApp, Steam IM, Battel.net, GoogleHangouts, Twitter feeds, Amazon Chime, WeChat, QQ, Rocket.chat, Slack, Mattermost, Tox, OkCupid,

Notification intergation

Add-on

Supported protocols

Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Lotus Sametime, Novell GroupWise, OSCAR, SIMPLE, SILC, XMPP, Jingle, Zephyr, Various extended protocols.

VoIP

Technology

Videoconferencing

Audio recording

Screensharing

Hosting options

Service integrations

Groups

Locationsharing

Lockable

Website

GIF

Voice message

Platforms

Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows,

Media

Yes

Message history

Yes

Emoticons

Off the Record Messaging

License

Opensource

Video chat

End to Encription

Spell checking

Chat plugins

Notification intergation

Supported protocols

VoIP

Yes

Technology

Java

Videoconferencing

Yes

Audio recording

Yes

Screensharing

Yes

Hosting options

Service integrations

Groups

Locationsharing

Lockable

Website

GIF

Voice message

Platforms

Windows , Linux , Mac , Android , iOS

Media

Yes

Message history

Yes

Emoticons

Yes, including Sticker from 3rd party such as Gboard

Off the Record Messaging

Optional

License

Opensource

Video chat

End to Encription

Spell checking

Chat plugins

Notification intergation

Supported protocols

VoIP

Yes

Technology

Videoconferencing

Audio recording

Screensharing

Hosting options

Hosted & self-hosted

Service integrations

Windows , Linux , Mac , Android , iOS

Groups

Yes

Locationsharing

Yes

Lockable

Yes

Website

www.astrachat.com

GIF

Yes, support 3rd party such as Gboard

Voice message

Yes

Platforms

Media

Message history

Emoticons

Off the Record Messaging

License

Opensource

Video chat

End to Encription

Spell checking

Chat plugins

Notification intergation

Supported protocols

VoIP

Technology

Videoconferencing

Audio recording

Screensharing

Hosting options

Service integrations

Groups

Locationsharing

Lockable

Website

GIF

Voice message

Platforms

Media

Message history

Emoticons

Off the Record Messaging

License

Opensource

Video chat

End to Encription

Spell checking

Chat plugins

Notification intergation

Supported protocols

VoIP

Technology

Videoconferencing

Audio recording

Screensharing

Hosting options

Service integrations

Groups

Locationsharing

Lockable

Website

GIF

Voice message

Pros + Cons

Con
Appears to be abandoned

Not Gatekeeper-compatible, SSL cert expired, social media presence is ancient.

Comment

Con
Lack of OMEMO encryption

the de facto standard for Jabber Texting [xmpp]

Comment

Con
Release version has old OTR

The current release, version 1.5.10.4 only does OTR version 2, and version 3 has been out for a long time.

Comment

Con
Lack of multi-resource message capability

No carbon copy, for example.

Comment

Con
No antispam (built-in or by plugin)

It has no challenge-like antispam (such as seen on github.com/jesobreira/box-sentry plugin for pidgin).

Comment

Pro
Free and open source

Pidgin and its code is completely free and open source. Pidgin has no ads and no features behind a paywall.

Comment

Con
Not a Mac OS client

There is NO Pidgin client native for Mac OS - only other apps based on Pidgin library - like Adium above.

Comment

Pro
Cross platform

The Pidgin instant messaging client is cross platform, working on Linux, Windows and OSX.

Comment

Con
Lacks OMEMO encryption

Not available natively nor via plug-in. Pidgin developers HOSTILE towards OMEMO.

Comment

Pro
Highly customisable with plugins

Pidgin not only has a large plugin library built-in, but also an array of third party plugins for a variety of functions.

Comment

Con
No native VoIP support

While there are plugins there is no built in support for VoIP in Pidgin which is time consuming to implement instead of being baked in from the jump.

Comment

Pro
Support for a wide range of additional chat services

Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.

Comment

Pro
Convenient notification features

Like other quality messaging clients, Pidgin features notifications that the user can set in order to have a variety of things happen when the users is mentioned, such as an audio cue or changing the system tray icon.

Comment