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Mac 101: Auto-join rooms in iChat

by Dave Caolo Sep 23rd 2009 at 7:00PM

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

Earlier today we saw a tweet that inspired this post. Patrick Burleson asked how he can stop iChat from automatically joining chat rooms he visited during an earlier session. It's possible, but you won't find the fix in the preferences.

First, I'll describe how to join a room automatically whenever iChat is launched. From the File menu, select Go To Chat Room.... A window appears. From there, select the correct account and add your room to the Room Name field. Next, click the "+" in the lower left-hand corner to add it as a favorite and select the "Autojoin" check box. Now, iChat will join that room each time it's launched.

To disable the autojoin, simply de-select that box. Why would a person want to automatically join a chat room, you say? Some folks collaborate with far-flung coworkers via AIM all day.

There you have it, Patrick (and TUAW readers). I hope this helps.

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Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.Earlier today we saw a tweet that inspired this post. Patrick...
 

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lostgame

Hey, I dunno if you guys read these comments or not, but I think it would be pertinent to write a Mac 101 about using Jabber to set up an MSN service for iChat - while there are many tutorials like this online already, the vast majority of them are circa 2004-2005, and both iChat and the Jabber clients have changed drastically since then.

In places like Europe and Canada, this is especially pertinent, as the vast majority of people use those services instead of AIM/Yahoo/etc - and some of us prefer iChat over, for instance, Adium.

If you guys would like, I'd be willing to write the article myself, but I think it's important to get an updated tutorial out there regardless, and this seems like the perfect place to put it.

September 24 2009 at 9:26 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to lostgame's comment
Daniel Indradjaja

Yes please lostgame... at least PM me if no one else is interested

September 24 2009 at 2:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Heimbachae

I joined the "bored" chat room this morning just out of curiosity, and i got booted within a MINUTE. my only comment was "there are still chat rooms!?" and BOOM i'm out.

anyone know of any decent chat rooms not ran by tools?

September 24 2009 at 8:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
untmdsprt

So where does one find rooms to meet new people? I've already looked online for webpages that gave a list of rooms, but to no avail. Most are so outdated you wonder if anyone still uses iChat or have they gone to Skype.

September 24 2009 at 4:59 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MIchael

I use this feature to connect to chat rooms I frequent. it makes it so I don't have to put in user names and passwords for each room.

September 24 2009 at 1:03 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kiyoseryu

Can you let us know how to do this in Adium on a jabber network?

September 23 2009 at 9:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Patrick

Thanks Dave! Unfortunately, that's not exactly what I was talking about. What I meant was, when I start iChat back up, a window opens up with chat sessions with everyone I was last chatting with. So if I was chatting with you and TJ, then I would have a window with both of you in it. It doesn't seem to matter even if I close all my chats before quitting. Maybe I need to nuke my iChat preferences.

September 23 2009 at 7:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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