Use Facebook chat service in iChat

I’m not a big “chat” kind of guy, but I do use my Facebook account to chat with friends once in a while. The problem I have is that I hate that Facebook’s chat lives in the web browser. It’s a pain, and I would much rather use Mac OS X’s iChat app.

Fortunately, you can set up iChat to work with Facebook’s chat quite easily. This offers you the features of iChat, with all your friends on Facebook.

You’ll need to know your Facebook username, which if you’re unsure, you can get here.

Setting up iChat to use Facebook chat is easy

Here are the simple steps to get iChat up and running with Facebook chat:

1. Open iChat and hit Command + , to bring up the preferences
2. Click the Accounts tab at the top of the iChat window
3. Click the + symbol at the bottom left of the window to add an account
4. In the Account Setup window that pops up, add the following:
   Account Type: Jabber
   Account Name: [your Facebook username]@chat.facebook.com
   Password: Your Facebook password
5. Click the arrow next to Server Options to view the server inputs and enter the following:
   Server: chat.facebook.com
   Port: 5222
6. Make sure the two checkboxes are UNCHECKED

That should do it.