Adding Skype usernames to OS X Address Book (workaround)
March 27, 2008
OS X’s Address Book only allows adding AIM, Jabber, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo IM addresses to contacts. This has been a known issue (Apple bug #4270469) for quite a while, and there is no indication of it getting fixed anytime soon.
You can work around this by adding an URL field to your contact template in Preferences and using the “skype” schema (urls like skype:username, skype://username or even callto://username). The custom URL field can also be named any way you want, so you can set it to “Skype” (default is “home page”).
Don’t expect any fancy integration in the Skype client, like showing contact names from Address Book instead of your contacts’ own defined names, but at least you can call them from the Address Book with one click.
Step by step
Open Preferences -> Templates. Select Add Field -> URL or click the + next to an existing URL field, if you already have one. Change the name to “Skype” or something similar by clicking on it, selecting “Custom…” and typing it in.
Add URLs like “skype:username” to the newly created field for your contacts.
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April 24th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
thanks for that!!
brilliant tip!!
May 16th, 2008 at 12:58 am
I tried this but on my system (MacOS 10.411) the browser (Safari) always adds the prefix “http://” so the whole URL is “http://callto://sugarclub1000″ … this does not work and results in an error.
How can I deactivate the automatic prefix?
May 16th, 2008 at 1:05 am
That’s odd. Your browser? I don’t know why the browser would even be invoked.
How about ‘callto:’ (without //), ’skype:’ or ’skype://’?
What happens if you try opening those from the command line:
$ open skype:jakajancar
It should open Skype. If it doesnt, the URI schema association probably isn’t set up correctly.
If none of these reveals the problem, you might also want to try updating Safari to the latest version (3.1.1).
August 17th, 2008 at 6:30 am
How can you make it so it does IM in skype and not video call them?
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
10.5.5 safari 3.1.2 imac
the same situation as Sassan….
but callto://username… is working fine
brilliant