# Adium

10 Hacker News commenters recommended Adium and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free Mac chat app that combines many messaging networks in one window, with persistent logs and customizable interfaces that some prefer to modern messengers.

## Why people recommend it

- Unified messaging across many networks (3 comments): "offered unified messaging and features like persistent logs and customizable interfaces" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053757)) "a single app such as trillian or Adium was enough to communicate on all of them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49658616)) "I can group my chats in iChat and Adium into different windows as I want" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49164197))
- Customizable interface, skins and smileys (3 comments): "offered unified messaging and features like persistent logs and customizable interfaces" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053757)) "One of my happiest open source memories was creating an Adiumy skin for my college" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49435002)) "Loved Adium and the community was great in building custom smileys" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49445915))
- Better than modern messaging apps (2 comments): "Adium was a far better messaging experience than anything modern." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053497)) "One of the best apps ever created." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49190827))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Facebook Messenger](https://hackerapproved.com/p/facebook-messenger.md): 36 recommend
- [Pidgin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pidgin.md): 30 recommend
- [Beeper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/beeper.md): 29 recommend
- [Dino XMPP client](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dino.md): 21 recommend
- [Element X](https://hackerapproved.com/p/element-x.md): 18 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Adium", https://hackerapproved.com/p/adium/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).