Adium Messenger Reviver

This page remains here for archival reasons.  As of March 12th 2015, the last of the servers accepting sign-ins from Adium have gone offline.  To use the Messenger service on the Mac, you will need to use Skype, the web-based Outlook.com client, or Windows Live Messenger 2012 in a Windows virtual machine.

As there’s been some requests for this, I put together a simple dmg which lets you copy the newly patched libpurple to the correct Adium (/Applications/Adium.app/Contents/Frameworks/libpurple.framework/Versions/Current) folder.  Hopefully Adium is updated soon so this won’t be needed.

Update: In addition to the above, due to changes on the Messenger servers, you will now need to make a small adjustment to make Adium work.  Choose the Adium menu, choose Preferences, double-click the MSN account, choose the Options category and change the Login Server to be msn.messengergeek.com and click OK.  This should be included in a future Adium Reviver version.

The post, Most third-party Messenger clients have gone offline temporarily has more info about the change made.

Additionally, you can also revive the official Messenger:mac client.

Known issues

• If you receive a message that the “libpurple folder” requires an administrator password, you probably don’t have Adium or the right version of Adium installed.
• On some accounts you might not be able to see your full contact list, this should soon be resolved in other clients and hopefully fixed in Adium too.

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Messenger Reviver 2:mac

This page remains here for archival reasons.  As of March 12th 2015, the last of the servers accepting sign-ins from Messenger:Mac have gone offline.  To use the Messenger service on the Mac, you will need to use Skype, the web-based Outlook.com client, or Windows Live Messenger 2012 in a Windows virtual machine.

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Starting November 13th, 2014, Messenger:mac clients are no longer able to sign in to the Messenger service and you will receive the following error:

Sign in to Microsoft Messenger failed because the service is not responding.  The service is not available or you may not be connected to the Internet.

As the underlying problem is similar to the issues from earlier this week, using the same technique used by the third-party clients and for Windows Live Messenger 2009, we can revive Messenger:mac.

Using Messenger Reviver 2:mac
To revive Messenger:mac, download the Messenger Reviver 2 dmg and open it from the Downloads folder.  Then right-click on the Messenger Reviver 2 mac icon and choose Open.

If you receive the “unidentified developer” warning message choose Open when asked.   Next, you may get a message reminding you that you’re about to install software, click Continue.  You can then click Continue to the Introduction screen, then the Install button, type in your password, and finally click the Install Software button.  After Reviver has completed, Messenger:mac should re-open and you should be able to sign in.

Important note: Unlike the Windows version, Messenger Reviver 2:mac at this time is not able to automatically download and install Messenger:mac.  If you do not already have it installed, you can install it from c|net Download.com.

Known issues and workarounds
When you sign into Messenger:mac after using Reviver:mac, you most likely will see various contact list addition requests from your contact list.  This is a side effect of tricking the server, and can either be ignored or dismissed.  Unfortunately, they will return again when you sign in again.  This issue is being seen in various third party clients as well.

In addition to this, even though contacts appear on your contact list, you might receive a message “Do you want to accept a message from an unknown sender”.  Click the Accept button and you can proceed with the conversation.

Lastly, on some accounts you might not appear online to your contacts.  Regrettably, this is a result of the same issues above.   You can workaround this problem by signing in on another client first (including logging into your Microsoft account at Outlook.com) and then signing into Messenger:mac.  The other client will put you online and Messenger:mac will take over your Messenger session.

System Requirements
A compatible version of OS X running Messenger:mac 8.0.1

Most third-party Messenger clients have gone offline temporarily

If you have been using BitlBee, Pidgin (or anything using its library, libpurple), Trillian or some other third-party instant messaging client that supports the msn protocol, you may have noticed over the past few hours that either your contact list is no longer accessible or you cannot sign in.

In BitlBee, you’ll see:
<root> msn – Logging in: Authenticated, getting buddy list
<root> msn – Login error: Connection timeout

In Pidgin, you’ll see it attempt to log in but get stuck at “Available – Connecting…”.  In Trillian, your contact list will just not appear.

The problem seems to stem from a change on Microsoft’s end about which application IDs are allowed to retrieve contact lists.  The ID used in the above clients is the applicationId (CFE80F9D-180F-4399-82AB-413F33A1FA11) from Windows Live Messenger 2008 (8.5).  When the client attempts to get the contact list, the server will reply with: Invalid Application Header Application ID is either not defined in database or blocked from access.

The Fix
The 2012 application ID key still works as do clients revived using Messenger Reviver.  If you’re wanting to re-compile any of these applications with source code, just edit the code to change the above ID to the 2012 one, 484AAC02-7F59-41B7-9601-772045DCC569.  Additionally, if you’re familiar with running python, you can use this python script to automatically patch your client (thanks dx for creating this).

For Pidgin users, you might consider using the msn-pecan protocol plugin, then setting up a new account as the WLM protocol in Pidgin.  This has several benefits, including avoiding the issue mentioned below.

UPDATE: Both BitlBee and Pidgin have both updated their source code trees, and Trillian has a new beta release.

Not showing online to your contacts
On some accounts, you will no longer show online to your contacts after changing the application ID.  This issue is being investigated, but does not affect the Microsoft Messenger clients revived using Messenger Reviver.  On Pidgin you can also use the msn-pecan protocol plugin to bypass the problem.

Meanwhile, despite “the end” of Messenger supposedly 12 days ago, the Messenger Service continues to hum along.