Frozen duck

June 13, 2016 5:13 PM

Why is Adium freezing?

I used Adium to combine all my instant messaging services. When I open it lately, it works okay for a few seconds then freezes when I try to click on my contacts list or pull down a menu option. Sometimes I can open a window to type, but that also freezes after a minute or two. The typing is getting stuck, like I'll type a word and it will show up after I'm typed it, and then not allow me to click send. Other people can message me, but I can't click on the window to open the conversation.

Can someone explain to me how to fix this in a way that makes sense? I am running OS X and I've updated to the latest version of Adium.

posted by ariadne's threadspinner to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

When this was happening to me with Adium it was because I'd changed the General settings to save (and show me) the last 9999 chats instead of something more reasonable. So when I tried to open a window it was trying to load a zillion messages in the background.

Does not totally sound like this is what is happening with you though. A few other things you can try.

- going into Disk Utility and repairing permissions. This can vary depending on which version of OSX you have (before El Capitan you'd just do it from Disk Utility, now it's a bit more complicated)
- seeing if you can close all your accounts and start them up one at a time to isolate a problem. I don't know how to do this specifically (and yours may freeze before you can do this) but try it.
- Adium has some troubleshooting tips which you can also try.
posted by jessamyn at 6:07 PM on June 13, 2016

Try disabling the different IM accounts individually, and see if one of them isn't causing the freeze. If one of the services has changed anything on their end, it can sometimes make Adium wig-out. A few years ago, Yahoo Messenger became unusable for a good long time because of a small change on Yahoo's side.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:14 PM on June 13, 2016

Response by poster: Not to threadsit, but I'm trying to disable them individually now and that is also making it freeze.
posted by ariadne's threadspinner at 6:43 PM on June 13, 2016

Have you tried any of the troubleshooting tips Jessamyn linked to? With OSX, one of the first things to try is to see if the bad behavior disappears when using the app in a new user account. A fresh set of preferences is a good move, too.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:09 AM on June 14, 2016 [1 favorite]