Connecting to ICQ

On this page are several guides for connecting to the NINA ICQ service.

Special Update! We want to celebrate the end of the old ICQ and the beginning of the NINA ICQ era. So until June 29th July 8th ICQ registration is free -- free registration extended for another week only and will be closed with the next server update!

Register your UIN here. Please consider donating to support the service and for other awards, even early access to other services and roles on our Discord server. We don't sell your data or throw ads at you, so we rely on donations to keep going.

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Beta ICQ Service

Our ICQ service is still under development. We currently support ICQ 2000 through 8. Some features such as extended statuses, moods, Buddy icons (avatars) are still in the works, however we have weekly service updates and most of these will be working soon.

If you run into any bugs or other issues, please let us know either on our Discord service or by contacting us via support.

Download ICQ

You can download the ICQ client from oldversion.com or elsewhere. Very soon we'll have an ICQ download page. You may also consider using QIP, downloads available on our wiki.

Configuring ICQ

Configuration will depend on the client you use and the version. We're working on getting tutorials and videos up explaining each one. If you can edit the settings or preferences in your client: change the hostname to the following value: login.oscar.nina.chat. Port should be the default 5190.

See above for further help and support if you're having trouble getting things going.

ICQ 6.x

We personally recommend ICQ 6.5, which you can get here. The host can be modified: Main > Options > Connection, then select Manual settings.

ICQ 7.x and 8.x

These require advanced patching and should not be done if you are not experienced. If you do not understand any of the steps below, try using an older version of ICQ instead.

ICQ 7.x: (requires hosts file block of update.icq.com)

  • Go to C:\Program Files\ICQ 7.x\packages\ICQ\ConfigFiles\AppConfig.xml
  • Set aimcc.connect.host.address's value to api.login.nina.chat
  • Set aimcc.connect.bossRedirect.address's value to api.nina.chat

ICQ 8.x: Before you edit, note: These are unicode strings, so if you're using HxD make sure to mark them, and edit them as unicode strings (i.e. a null byte between each character).

  • Hex edit %appdata%\ICQM\ICQ.exe
  • Change api.login.icq.net to api.login.nina.bz
  • Change api.icq.net to api.nina.bz

TOC

If using a TOC client, you can set the host to toc.oscar.nina.chat and port to 9898

WebAPI

If using a WebAPI or WIM client, you can use api.nina.chat.

ICQ on the Web

ICQ was available on web browsers in a variety of ways, currently we offer primarily AIM-oriented web based clients, however you can sign on to them with your UIN.

Patching binaries

If you have a binary you wish to patch by yourself (this is not required for standard ICQ clients), you can replace the host .icq.com with .nina.bz. Therefore you can modify the host to be login.oscar.nina.bz.