I have been playing with Skype and Empathy. My main goal was to integrate the Skype messenger option into Empathy and to get rid of the Skype icon. I knew i could add Skype to the messenger menu and remove the Skype icon using the skype-wrapper and a terminal command line to remove the icon. But i didn’t know how to add Skype to Empathy. So i did some searching in the Ubuntu Software Center and found a Skype plugin for Pidgin that also works in Empathy. This plugin adds your Skype contacts and the messenger function to Empathy.
First download and install the latest version of Skype from the Skype website and install it using the Ubuntu Software Center.
To install the pidgin-skype plugin search for: pidgin-skype in the Ubuntu software center and to install it select the search result and click on the Install button. When the pidgin-skype plugin is installed you can close the Ubuntu software center.
To install the skype-wrapper you need to add the Skype-wrapper PPA. To add the PPA and install Skype-wrapper open a terminal window (press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy+paste the following lines:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:skype-wrapper/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install skype-wrapper
To make the skype-wrapper work it needs to be given permission to ‘access’ and control Skype.
To remove the icon copy+paste the following line in the terminal window:
sudo apt-get remove sni-qt
When the icon is removed you can close the terminal window.
To make it all work you need to start the programs in the following order:
1. Skype
2. skype-wrapper
3. Empathy
To enable the pidgin-skype plugin in Empathy you need to start Empathy and when Empathy is up and running press the F4 key and your messaging and voip account window will open. To add your Skype account click on the + button and select the bigbrownchunx-skype-dbus plugin in the Protocol list. Enter your Skype account name and when done click on the Login button followed by clicking on the Close button to close the messaging and voip account window. When the Skype account is added to Empathy you will get another skype4py request.