iChat: Chatting Outside the Bubbles

iChat is something of a staple in many online chatteris lives because it handles text, voice and video chats. If you are using Mac OS X 10.5, it also supports screen sharing, and even hides a few tricks if you know where to look.

One of the cool little tricks iChat has up its sleeve harkens back to the days when IRC clients ruled the land. If you start a message with "/me" iChat will transmit the message with your name first followed by your text, and it will all land in the chat outside of a chat bubble.


Start your iChat message with /me...

For example, if I want to tell a colleague that Iim back at my desk, I could type /me deftly walks back to his desk and my friend would see Jeff Gamet deftly walks back to his desk.


...to bump it outside of a chat bubble.

This is handy if you want to add some special message or tag to a chat session -- maybe to note what the conversation relates to for future reference. Or maybe you just want to herald your return to your computer.

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