WeeChat (Wee Enhanced Environment for Chat) is a fast and light IRC client for many operating systems. Everything can be done using a keyboard. The software is very light on system resources and brings innovative features.
The software is highly customizable and extensible with plugins and scripts.
Apart from the usual feature set of modern IRC clients, WeeChat provides incremental text search in buffers, aspell support, a smart hotlist, scripting support for many languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua, Tcl), FIFO pipes for remote control and support for multiple charsets.
Key Features
- Connection:
- Multi-servers connection, with no limit.
- Soft, background connection.
- IPv6 support.
- SSL support.
- Proxy support.
- Auto-reconnection.
- Nicklist.
- Smart hotlist.
- Infobar with highlight notification.
- Horizontal and vertical split.
- Smart “hotlist” in status bar: partial or full names of channels with activity.
- Double charset support (decode/encode).
- DCC support: files and chats.
- FIFO pipe for remote control.
- Double charset support: one for decoding, one for encoding messages (global and by server/channel).
- UTF-8 support.
- Status and infobar.
- Lag indicator.
- 256 color support, with unlimited number of nick colors.
- Color for away nicks.
- Auto completion for nicks, commands and args.
- Command alias.
- IRC proxy.
- Redirection of IRC commands.
- Command / notify.
- Modifier plugin.
- Auto save chats to files.
- Highly customizable with a dynamic setup.
- Extensible with Perl, Python, Ruby & Lua scripts.
- Plugin API:
- Custom buffers, nicklists and bars/items.
- Hooks: commands, timers, files/sockets, modifiers, completion.
- Configuration files with custom sections/options.
- Large range of plugins available including alias, demo, fifo, irc, jabber, logger, notify, tcl, xfer, relay.
- Wide range of scripts: weeget.py (scripts manager), buffers.pl (sidebar with list of buffers), jabber.py (jabber/XMPP protocol), go.py (quick jump to buffers), iset.pl (set options interactively), weetris.pl (tetris-like game), mastermind.pl etc.
- Extensible with C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Lua, Tcl, Scheme, JavaScript and PHP.
- Compliant with RFC 1459,2810,2811,2812,2813.
- Mouse support.
- Cursor mode (free movement of cursor on screen).
- Contexts for keys.
- Split of outgoing IRC messages.
- Color for offline nicks.
- System resource limits for WeeChat process.
- Connect to your WeeChat from your browser, Android, Qt or even Emacs.
- Available in many languages.
- Multi-platforms: Linux, Unix, BSD, GNU Hurd, Mac OS X and Windows (Bash/Ubuntu and Cygwin).
Website: weechat.org
Support: Documentation, FAQ
Developer: FlashCode, kolter and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
WeeChat is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Console IRC Clients | |
|---|---|
| WeeChat | Wee Enhanced Environment for Chat; very light and extensible |
| Irssi | Console based client supporting SILC and ICB protocols |
| glirc | Advanced client maintaining a model of the IRC connection state |
| tiny | Rust based IRC client |
| ERC | Powerful, modular, and extensible IRC client for Emacs |
| ScrollZ | Advanced ircII-based IRC client |
| ircc | A single C file which implements a usable IRC client |
| senpai | IRC client that works best with bouncers |
| EPIC | Based on ircII, EPIC excels at scripting |
| catgirl | Targets FreeBSD, OpenBSD, macOS and Linux |
| zuse | Sleek, minimal IRC client for your terminal. |
| rirc | Minimalistic IRC client |
| kirc | Tiny IRC client |
| Swirc | Console based ICB and IRC client |
| Xaric | irc client similar to (and forked from) BitchX and ircII |
| insomnia | Frontend for the hii IRC client |
| ii | Minimalist FIFO and filesystem-based IRC client |
| hii | File-based IRC client |
| Circada | Comes with two modes, normal chat mode and the navigation mode |
| BarnOwl | Forked from the ktools owl project |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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