EMPATHY(1)

💬 EMPATHY(1) — the girlies' guide to the chat client 💬

okay so bestie, welcome to the empathy manual page — that's the one and only GNOME multi-protocol chat and call client. yes she's a User Command, yes she's iconic, yes we're getting into it. grab a boba, this is gonna be cute 🧋✨

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✨ NAME ✨

empathy — GNOME multi-protocol chat and call client 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

empathy

that's it. that's the whole vibe. just run her 🫶

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so like, empathy is the GNOME multi-protocol chat and call client — an instant messaging program that does text, voice, video, file transfers AND inter-application communication. not her being multi-talented?? she's giving main character energy fr fr 😭👑

and she speaks so many protocols, no cap:

• AIM
• MSN
• Google Talk (Jabber/XMPP)
• Facebook
• Yahoo!
• Salut
• Gadu-Gadu
• Groupwise
• ICQ
• QQ

the way that's literally ten protocols and she's handling all of them at once — lowkey unhinged, highkey impressive 💖

as for the main user interface? it's a contact list window plus an icon in the notification area. two things. simple. elegant. periodt ✨

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

she doesn't have a million flags and honestly? respect. here's the whole lineup:

• -n, --no-connect — don't connect on startup. she'll just sit there, existing, not talking to anybody 🙈
• -h, --start-hidden — don't display the contact list or any other dialogs on startup. she's shy, she's mysterious, she's lurking 🕶️
• -v, --version — show version. tell me who you are, queen 💁‍♀️

ngl bestie, heads up: with empathy the -h flag is --start-hidden, not help. so if you were expecting a help screen, you're getting a hidden window instead. read the room 💀

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🎀 ENVIRONMENT 🎀

the environment variables, aka the behind-the-scenes lore:

• EMPATHY_LOGFILE=filename — if you set this, debug output goes to the given file instead of to stderr. so instead of screaming into the void, she writes it down in a lil diary 📓✨
• EMPATHY_DEBUG=type — can be set to "all" for full debug output, or to various undocumented options to filter the output. and bestie, those undocumented options may change from release to release 👀 so don't get too attached, they're chaotic like that 💀

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🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

this manual page was written by Laurent Bigonville, for the Debian GNU/Linux system — but may be used by others 🫶 shoutout to Laurent, we appreciate you fr 💖

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

go read these next, bestie, it's a whole universe:

• empathy-accounts(1)
• The Telepathy project
• The Empathy project

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Telepathy project · February 2010 — mwah, that's a wrap 💋 thanks for reading the empathy(1) page with me, you ate that ngl. go chat with somebody, you deserve it 🦋💜