How to create custom status icons theme for Empathy

Empathy comes with a very ugly status icons theme. I’m so sick of it so i made one based on Adiumy Status Icons Classic on adiumxtras.

– Create folders as the structure below.

$HOME/.icons/hicolor/
|-- 16x16
|   `-- status
|       |-- empathy-available.png
|       |-- empathy-away.png
|       |-- empathy-busy.png
|       |-- empathy-extended-away.png
|       `-- empathy-offline.png
|-- 22x22
|   `-- status
|       |-- empathy-available.png
|       |-- empathy-away.png
|       |-- empathy-busy.png
|       |-- empathy-extended-away.png
|       `-- empathy-offline.png
|-- 24x24
|   `-- status
|       |-- empathy-available.png
|       |-- empathy-away.png
|       |-- empathy-busy.png
|       |-- empathy-extended-away.png
|       `-- empathy-offline.png
|-- 32x32
|   `-- status
|       |-- empathy-available.png
|       |-- empathy-away.png
|       |-- empathy-busy.png
|       |-- empathy-extended-away.png
|       `-- empathy-offline.png
`-- 48x48
    `-- status
        |-- empathy-available.png
        |-- empathy-away.png
        |-- empathy-busy.png
        |-- empathy-extended-away.png
        `-- empathy-offline.png

– You can take those icons from the status icons theme for Pidgin on GNOME-LOOK or from a theme on adiumxtras, put them in the folders as structure above and restart Empathy. Boom, you’re done.

– If you’re so lazy to make one yourself, you can download my Adium status icons theme from here and extract to /home/username/.icons

[How to] Install Adium message style for Empathy

Empathy has been shipped as default instant messenger on Karmic Koala. One good thing about Empathy is that, by default it supports Adium Message Styles.

First, make sure you have WebKit installed. If not, you can get it through PPA for WebKit Team.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webkit-team/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Remember to update and add key for this repo. After that, issue this command in the terminal

sudo apt-get install libwebkit-dev

Now, you are ready to go. You can simply download the style from adiumxtras and manually extract the tarball to ~/.local/share/adium/message-styles/*.AdiumMessageStyle or grab a script for automatically handling adiumxtras protocol right from the browser here.

Make sure to take a look at theme support status section to see whether the theme is fully supported.