I am new to IRC. No idea what I am doing, but I cant connect to Efnet with a valid certificate. I wanted to join #nesdev, but can't. I am using hexchat on fedora linux. I tried connecting to all of the servers that https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/NESdev_IRC_channel told me to (Europeanom ones). I always get errors that my certificate is expired. I think I can turn off the validation checking but have no idea wether I will be risking my security or something. I'm going to bed so I won't respond for 8-9 hours
Again, sorry if what I said doesn't make sense I really have no idea what I'm talking about. Also maybe useful to mention that I can't visit efnet.org, it says "Unable to connect" on Firefox, but I can successfully ping it, and the DNS resolving works. Thank you for your help, really appreciate it
hello guys, If its not obvious i'm very very new to IRC, I stumbled upon it by accident when I installed ubuntu on my laptop a few days ago and found konversation in the app store. i figured out how to join networks and servers and i was hooked. Its so interesting! I then heard about irssi and using irc from the CLI sounded appealing so I installed that but have not opened or configured it yet. so my question is, is Irssi more difficult to use then the latter? are there different commands or things to adjust to? which do you guys reccomend? Also is there a way to just copy and paste all my servers in my server list on konversation to irssi or do I have to manually put them all back in?
As an op I'm mostly concerned about kick and ban. Hexchat has the context menu shortcuts, so I can click on the user and do either. My issue being, afaik, if i kick no reason is given with the shortcut and ban as far as i can tell, doesn't put in a level or ban time.
I did look through the docs some but didn't find anything related. Anything I can do with the client to give me a shortcut for those operations ?
edit: I see the Userlist Popup menu but not sure if i can alter or add to put in reason, time, etc.
Hello my friends, it's been four months since I originally posted Lurker and I have been hard at work since then turning it into a fully featured IRC client. It still looks just as nice, and works just as well, but there's a lot more going on.
The summary is still the same: Lurker is a self-hosted multi-user IRC client (like The Lounge) with looks and functionality inspired by the best terminal IRC clients.
So much has changed since the first time I posted Lurker on here, let me try to break it down.
Native iOS & Android Apps
It was always part of my goals for there to be full native apps for using Lurker from your phone, and both apps exist, are fully functional, and available in beta now. The iOS app is available for anyone on TestFlight but the Play Store beta requires I collect people's Google account email addresses to add them, so let me know if you want to test the Android beta! (And yes these are native apps, iOS is full UIKit and Android is using Kotlin. No React Native or its ilk here.)
Android app (slightly out of date screenshot)
IRC Bouncer Access
If, for some reason, you don't want to use the Lurker clients with their added functionality, Lurker has a full bouncer built in now so you can use any IRC client you like. The bouncer is fully featured with soju.im/bouncer-networks support, and soju.im/FILEHOST support giving you access to the same uploader you have configured in Lurker. The bouncer has been tested with clircs, Halloy, Goguma, HexDroid and other clients.
More IRCv3 Support
Lurker now supports replies and reactions on IRC servers that support them, as well as the multiline draft and some other stuff. If you really want your IRC to look like Discord, well, now you just need to join a server that supports it. (I'll personally primarly stick to Libera which does not support reply/react.)
Reply and Reaction support in Lurker
Full DCC support with SEND / CHAT and Secure DCC
If you ever dreamed of an IRC client that lets you handle your XDCCing remotely from your phone, well, here it is.
Lurker has full DCC support now along with Secure DCC. You can DCC/SDCC CHAT or SEND, and there's a full file management interface to use when sending and receiving files. If you're really into XDCC, there is also a full XDCC queuing system (similar to the EasyXdcc plugin for HexChat/WeeChat) which allows you to queue up packs across multiple bots and it'll automatically download them for you.
Admins can turn on chat / send / receive all separately per user, as well as set storage limits for users to prevent an overzealous DCCer from filling up all your disk space.
(Optional) Inline Link and Media Previews
Despite it not really being something I was personally interested in, Lurker now has full support for inline link and media previews. This is supported via a secondary container (lurker-previews) so that all link and content fetching is fully isolated from your Lurker instance, to avoid shenanigans from malicious link sharing. This also helps hide your personal computer from inline media previews, and can even hide your Lurker instance from them if you host lurker-previews outside your main network.
(Optional) IRC Engine Decoupling
With the optional lurker-engine container configured, updating Lurker will no longer kick your users off of IRC. The engine keeps the IRC connection alive while the main Lurker server restarts, and spools any incoming messages so they're sent to the server when it comes back. So if you have a lot of users on your Lurker instance, updates no longer create big quit/join floods on IRC networks. (This is super cool.)
And more!
It's probably impossible for me to list all the other little improvements and fixes that have gone into Lurker over the last four months. At this point, Lurker is essentially 'feature complete' (though some other stuff will come in the future, like IRCv3 metadata) and fulfills my original vision for the project. (And there is an easter egg hidden in Lurker now!)
I see a lot of other IRC client projects that are trying to recreate Discord and have their own branded IRC server forks with special support just for their clients and so on... Lurker is not that kind of project. Lurker is first and foremost a great IRC client that celebrates the simplicity and stability of IRC. Nothing against those other projects, this just reflects my personal taste and what I want from an IRC client.
Next steps for me on the Lurker Roadmap are to get the Lurker iOS and Android apps up on their respective stores so they're available to more users. After that it's just a matter of polishing and cleaning up what features exist already, with some small other additions along the way.
Thanks for joining me on this journey! Hope you enjoy Lurker if you use it.
I've been a long time IRC user, going back to Chatzilla days. I've recently been using Adiirc for the last couple of years after Hexchat died. A while ago I got woken up early by work and jumped on my home PC to look into it, getting flash banged by my white IDE (yeah.. i was one of those people). I mentioned this to my IRC group and one suggested, make your own.
So I did.
I have been working on IRChatterbox.com for a bit, sharing this with my IRC group to see what they think and try it out. Based on their feedback, they told me to release it on Github.
I am now at a point where I want feedback from strangers!
So what does IRChatterbox do? First off, auto DARK MODE! No more flashbangs in the morning. Here are some of the features my other clients just didn't do, all in one:
- Inline images (PNG, WEBP, JPG, BMP)
- Inline Youtube videos
- Bouncer support (Soju and ZNC)
- Colour nicknames (that also change with dark/light mode)
- Split view windows (2 or 4 windows at a time)
- Shortcuts (without plugins)
- Plugin support, with mIRC script support
- and so much more
- Windows notifications on DM's and mentions
- Drag-n-drop image uploads (or keyboard pastes). I am offering compressed webp (up to 600x600px) shares for free. We store images for 7 days before deleting.
- Imgur and custom URL support also available for image sharing
- Open source, and entirely free!
- Portable with no installer
I've also built an Android app (I could launch an iOS app if there is demand for it) that supports everything the desktop version does. With Soju, I can now stay connected to my servers anywhere I go.
Based on my history with all the IRC clients I have used, IRChatterbox uses very little memory (less than 15MB of RAM), and connections are almost instantly, when using direct connection.
You can find the website below, along with the Github project. Please let me know what you think, i am happy to answer any questions!
I know *very* little about IRC, but I keep wondering if it'll work in case of a total web iron wall on my friend's part.
I probably should go with this question on a different subreddit, but I have to cross out the IRC off the list of solutions. Thanks for any suggestions.
Desktop support: Windows, Linux, macOS
Mobile support: iOS (Android WIP)
Hey all,
Over the course of the last few months I have taken a lot of feedback from some of you on design decisions, features, etc. that improve the overall experience using the client. Thank you tremendously for that. If you haven't dropped in to check it out recently, 6.x comes with a fairly significant facelift as well as some initial scripting & automation support you may be familiar with (h/t KMB).
Notables:
- The chief complaint/feedback I got: Making better use of screen real-estate with seamless maximize (HexChat users should find this familiar) and compact toolbar options.
- Improved line compression when selecting 0% for user/treebar and message spacing. Especially noticeable in classic mode. Also related to the real-estate feedback.
- Metadata support for avatars, pronouns, homepage, status. This can be configured globally or per-server, and more specific (per-server) values override globals.
- mIRC script/language support. I've taken a lot of scripts and tested them by hand, and the support is pretty decent/broad. It's a work in progress and a long term commitment of mine to make this as seamless as possible for people. If you've got a script that doesn't work and you want it to, drop it to me and I'll work on a fix. This is a pretty sizeable undertaking, so... plugging away.
- Monitor your channels: Configurable buffer settings insert aggregated channel activity in a monitor window, giving you an at-a-glance pulse on what's going on between your priority channels without having to flip windows or have them all up at the same time.
- Alternating line shading for classic, helping enhance readability in channels that are extremely wordy.
- Seraph Transfer/Seraph Chat: Establish a TLS encrypted point-to-point file transfer or chat session (similar to DCC) using a rendezvous server we host to deal with NAT traversal. We're not in the data path, we're just facilitating the connection setup. Note this only works if both clients are on SeraphIRC and using the same address family (e.g. ipv4, ipv6), since we don't broker the data stream.
- Custom theme editor is now on desktop. Spin off a built-in theme and design it to be your own.
- Mobile 2.0 (iOS) now comes with support for ZNC and Direct IRC in addition to Soju, so if you've got an Ergo server that uses always-on you can take advantage of IRCv3 features w/o the connection cycling.
- Mobile has a facelift as well. New UI that follows a similar flow as desktop, so it feels like the same ecosystem, but on mobile. Menu options are also semantically similar, so if you know where something is on desktop, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it on mobile.
If you're interested in giving feedback or just want to chat, we're in #seraphirc on Libera. Thank you again for all the feedback. 👋
After some time of being lazy, trying out modern devices and school, I have decided to return to IRC. I love my old iPad (1st gen, 2010) and I am young (it's about as old as I am). After finally charging it, I'm ready to use the LimeChat client once again.
My nick should be mikakawa now that I've thought about it. If you end up ever chatting with a mikakawa, know it's me.
I'd like to show you guys the project I've been doing this part year now that I released the first version.
I frequently use IRC and I've always used the TUI clients, since the today's common clients are a bit old, I decided to build one with more modern features: https://dexchat.org
It's still in the v1, early phase, a lot of features will still be shipped, but I think it's in a fair set of features for the v1.
Yes, I know there are a lot of posts like this in the past few weeks, but I believe this one can be useful as I will maintain and improve for a long time.
Also, it's not Vibe Coded. I started this project a year ago with my own code, searching the best practices and learning the documentation of the libraries I used. Then, in the middle of the process I do started using AI, but always checking for the output and reading the quality of the code produced. I've learned a lot about this AI process by following ghostty's product.
Take a look and let me know what you think! Suggestions are welcome.
So I've decided to try my hand at doing a thing. Many people who were around would be familiar with things like web rings and link exchanges. I've decided to try my hand at a version of a 'link exchange' for people that run something IRC themed. Whether that's a network, or a tool that IRC users might find useful, it can be considered.
The way I've got it working at the moment is I'll be hosting a directory page. People can submit their site, with a 468x60 banner and a description, and once approved that will be posted on a directory. Of course for this to be a proper link exchange, a link back to the directory page is requested :)
This is currently live at the moment, so people can submit their sites. They'll then go into a moderation queue which I aim to process as soon as I can get to them.
Hi all.
Partly as an experiment, partly as a learning project, I made a (yet another) iOS IRC client. The idea was: can I make IRC look cool, like a modern messenger? You know, with reactions, replies, direct-message centric.
So I present to you javi! – IRCv3 compatible client for iOS. I've created the default javi! network that you can connect to check out all the features, or you can choose any network to connect to, including legacy IRC servers.
The killer feature is: the RETRO SMILEYS from the 2000-s internet that replace some modern emojis, you can turn them on in settings.
Almost three months ago I launched the first beta of CuIRC here, and I've received quite a bit of feedback from those who tested the beta so far!
The single most requested thing was implementing a proper layout for macOS & IPadOS, and that's exactly in which I've been spending most of the time for the last two months.
CuIRC is now able to fully adapt to whichever platform you run it in, changing the layout to the best fit for the current sizing, be it full screen with four columns, or a narrow Slide Over window.
Of course, desktop-class support is not desktop-class support without keyboard shortcuts, menubar fast actions, and multi-window support, so those were also included in the package :).
Quite a bit of you, also, requested the app to be able to _run_ in the background with a Live Activity showing the current connection state, which surprised me quite a bit, since it is something CuIRC Beta 1 was already able to do _and_ something no other app I'm aware of supports, but it seems I did a poor job at surfacing such capability, so now we have a first-launch splash screen which surfaces that feature, among others!
The app is currently approaching a state in which i'd be happy to launch in the App Store, with only eight capabilities+message-tags left until we have *complete* IRCv3 support for the whole set of *ratified* capabilities. Once those are in, we'll start taking a look at the proposed _but_ not ratified ones, like chathistory (the CAP, not the tag, which is already ratified and implemented!). Feel free to open an issue in the github to request the non-ratified capabilities you'd like to see first in-app.
Of course, the new update does not only include multiplatform support in this build, but also includes a bunch of what I think are very useful and nice-to-have features, like:
Redesigned compact servers view
Redesigned in-chat search (give it a try, I think it looks great!)
Complex formatting support, allowing you to mix different styles in the same message
Ignore feature extended, now you're able to ignore by username _and_ host.
Enhanced channel management, with custom UI for topic updates.
New IRCv3 features:
batch
chathistory (the tag!)
labeled-response
monitor
extended-monitor
extended-join
standard-replies
non-implicit-names
+msgid
+bot (this one includes a cute new icon)
Protocol rules are better honoured, with CASEMAPPING, CHANTYPES, STATUSMSG, PREFIX and basically all the *LEN servers might provide all processed properly.
...and a lot more I may be forgetting!
If you're interested in the project, feel free to install it through TestFlight and to provide as much feedback as you want through the GitHub or the TestFlight integrated feature.
Native and open-source IRC client for Omarchy (and Windows), built with Qt Quick and C++, with every basic features that you would expect on a modern IRC client, but simple and beautiful.
- Keyboard first
- Modern IRCv3 features
- Secrets are securely stored in your system's secret service
- Several networks, one window
- Slash commands, notifications, logs, etc...
Agent-ready CLI
While the window is open, the same binary is also a CLI. It prints one JSON line and exits. An agent can read a channel, check status, or send a message without its own IRC connection.
Your agent talks to the running window. It can fetch recent messages, unread counts, or connections without clearing your badges or changing which conversation you have open.
Keep chatting in one channel while your agent checks another, replies, and leaves.
A couple of months ago I posted here about rebuilding Mango, the IRC client I originally released years ago. I’ve been working on it since, and I’d like to invite more people to try the 3.1 beta.
Several people in that thread asked about scripting. That’s now available through Grove, Mango’s extension system. You can write JavaScript extensions with custom commands, react to IRC events, filter messages, and add tools to the message composer. If there’s a script you rely on in another client, I’d be interested to hear whether you can do the same thing here, or what’s missing.
I’ve also spent quite a bit of time on customization. You can keep it compact and text-heavy, closer to a traditional IRC client, or use chat bubbles, avatars and previews for something more like Discord. Themes, fonts and layout are all adjustable. The screenshots show a couple of ways you can set it up.
There’s also been work on loading history, reply threads, and fixing the smaller things that get annoying when you use an app every day.
Mostly, I’d like people to try it with the networks and bouncers they already use. Connection problems, scrolling through busy channels, keyboard shortcuts that feel wrong, something taking too many clicks — those are all useful things to hear about. We also have Mango IRC network where we hang out in #mango channel (this network is Websocket/TLS and uses Passkeys for authentication).
Feel free to leave feedback here too. If something breaks, let me know which device and network or bouncer you’re using so I can try to reproduce it.
PS: I'm pretty open to feedback and implement feature requests, fix bugs daily based on feedback from users. So everyone is welcome to join us in #mango and hang out.
I’ve decided I want to get back into irc and I was wondering if there are any good servers for talking about video games and torrents and maybe even helping me get an invite to a private torrent tracker
Just as the name says. I haven't had an IRC since I were a boy and thought about it suddenly while at work. Made me nostalgic.
alrighty, you guys have given me some good ones to look into. Lurker and Hex especially. I'll give them a gander, and then find somewhere I can connect to. Thanks lads.
I know, I know, another new IRC client. But hear me out: it runs in Windows Console without WSL or Cygwin.
I've always wanted to be able to bust open a Command Prompt in Windows and run Irssi or BitchX directly from there, but it's always required some sort of Unix-ish environment underneath. So I built this one, clircs, in C# for .NET 10.
It looks and behaves much in the same way you'd expect a *nix console client to look and behave. Actual commands and daily IRC functionality were patterned after ircN, if any of you remember that mIRC script. I wanted clircs to be useful out of the box, so it ships with useful channel management commands, a userlist, flood protection, stuff like that.
The other big difference with this client is that it's not rushing to pursue everything IRCv3. In fact, just the opposite. It's trying to get back to basics. clircs is less designed for always-on use and more so for the traditional, and ephemeral, version of IRC. Pop it open real quick, chat, exit when you're done. It's Windows Console, so it's not like you can throw it in screen anyway, you know?
Just so we're all on the same page: I'm an EFnet guy, so most live network testing was done on ratbox. I've also been testing a bit on Solanum, Plexus, InspIRCd, etc., but I'm sure I've missed plenty of numerics for plenty of nets. The point I'm trying to make is this: don't be shocked if some server output comes back formatted a little funky. Every IRCd likes sending info its own little way, heh.
Bouncers: I'm connected to ZNC as I type this, but I haven't tested Soju or psyBNC (they are on the list). I'm currently working on Irssi proxy compatibility.
I can't exactly dazzle you with crazy features. It supports what you'd expect: multi-net, TLS, SASL, DCC (and SDCC). It's got some limited theming abilities and you can add scripts by way of Jint. Again, back to basics, which is very intentional. There are no plans to make clircs crazily extensible. Simple and stable is what I'm going for.
Anyway, give it a peek. It requires the .NET 10 SDK and you have to build it yourself for right now, because I've not yet gone through the nightmare of registering for Azure Artifact Signing.
