*** Bug 598267 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Maybe there can also be a setting requiring one of these:
- Always use (even if there's a real avatar)
- Only show when no real avatar, otherwise real avatar takes precedence
- Inactivate (so you can keep the custom avatar for later use)

AFAIK, no protocol allows you to store this avatar on the server, so that have to be stored on your computer. We don't store contact list atm; so that's something we won't be able to do until we have meta contacts support.

*** Bug 633570 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This is blocked by bug #633781

Hey guys! It`s 2,5 years since opening that wish and it seems, that it still don`t work (at least I cannot find that option) - that`s why I still use Pidgin. ;) Empathy does already support meta contacts, so are any plans to support that feature?

Humm actually that may be possible using gnome-contacts as we get the avatar from Folks. Can you try setting an avatar of a contact using gnome-contact and check if it's displayed in Empathy after a restart?

Yes, it work that way, thanks. However it would be nice to implement it inside empathy - it would be much easier for new user than searching for this program in repository (and he must know, that it`s needed).

Cool. I don't think we're going to add this feature to Empathy itself. We are going to a deeper integration with other GNOME components so there is no much point re-implementing this if gnome-contact already does it for us.

Then at least a button in option menu, that would launch gnome-contacts, or any info about this somewhere, than leaving user with think "lol, Pidgin can do that, and this can`t - maybe I`ll check it again in next year". Even for me - to get knowledge about how to set this picture I had to burrow in bugzilla - that don`t look user-friendly.