Status Hot Keys

Status Hot Keys is a Pidgin plugin that gives you the possibility to create global keyboard shortcuts for changing your status and toggling the visibility of the buddy window.

To install the plugin, you simply have to copy the .dll file from the downloaded archive to the Plugins folder of Pidgin's installed directory, which is in the App > Pidgin subfolder. This works even if you have a portable copy of the instant messenger. If the IM was already running before copying the DLL, it's not necessary to restart it to apply the new settings.

To enable the plugin, open the Tools menu of Pidgin and choose Plugins (or press Ctrl+U), scroll down the list until you spot Status Hot Keys, then tick its box.

To configure its settings, select the plugin's entry from the list and click Configure Plugin. The app shows the currently bound hotkeys in a list, giving you the possibility to edit existing properties or just remove the entries.

To add a new global hotkey to the list, you can press the keys on your keyboard to assign them, set the status to Available, Away, Do Not Disturb, Invisible or Offline (or keep the current status), apply a static message that you can write on the spot, keep the current message or the last empty that wasn't empty, as well as ask the tool to prompt you every time you trigger the designated hotkey in order to specify a static message or the last non-empty one on the spot.

Pidgin is capable of focusing or hiding the buddy list, setting it as the bottom window, showing or hiding the taskbar (toggling its visibility), or displaying the pending conversation. It can hide the buddy list taskbar icon on startup as well as create local hotkeys only instead of global ones (which can be triggered from any other application or the desktop). It's possible to create as many hotkeys as you want.

All things considered, Status Hot Keys offers a straightforward solution and approachable configuration settings for controlling your Pidgin status and window visibility using hotkeys.