Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 28, 2026

Irssi

Irssi is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client program for Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Microsoft Windows. It was originally written by Timo Sirainen, and released under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later in January 1999.

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Irssi
Original authorTimo Sirainen
DeveloperThe Irssi team
Initial releaseJanuary 1999 (1999-01)1
Stable release
1.4.52 Edit this on Wikidata / 3 October 2023
Written inC, Perl3
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeIRC client
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later4
Websiteirssi.org
Repository

Irssi (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈirsːi] (listen)) is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client program for Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Microsoft Windows. It was originally written by Timo Sirainen, and released under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later in January 1999.1

The program has a text-based user interface written from scratch using C. It may be customized by editing its config files or by installing plugins and Perl scripts. Though initially developed for Unix-like operating systems, it has been successfully ported to both Windows and macOS.

Features

Irssi is written in the C programming language and in normal operation uses a text-mode user interface.5

According to the developers, Irssi was written from scratch, not based on ircII (like BitchX and epic).6 This freed the developers from having to deal with the constraints of an existing codebase, allowing them to maintain tighter control over issues such as security and customization.6 Numerous Perl scripts have been made available for Irssi to customise how it looks and operates.7 Plugins are available which add encryption89 and protocols such as ICQ and XMPP.1011

Irssi may be configured by using its user interface or by manually editing its configuration files, which use a syntax resembling Perl data structures.5

Distributions

Irssi was written primarily to run on Unix-like operating systems, and binaries and packages are available for Gentoo Linux, Debian, Slackware, SUSE (openSUSE), Frugalware, Fedora, FreeBSD, OpenBSD,12 NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris,13 Arch Linux,14 Ubuntu,13 NixOS,15 and others.

Irssi builds and runs on Microsoft Windows under Cygwin, and in 2006, an official Windows standalone build was released.16

For the Unix-based macOS, text mode ports are available from the Homebrew, MacPorts, and Fink package managers, and two graphical clients have been written based on Irssi, IrssiX, and MacIrssi.13 The Cocoa client Colloquy was previously based on Irssi,17 but it now uses its own IRC core implementation.18

See also

See also

References

References

  1. Manual. irssi.org.
  2. "Release 1.4.5". 3 October 2023. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  3. "Irssi". GitHub.
  4. irssi v. 0.8.16 source files (e.g. irssi-0.8.16/src/core/core.c)
  5. Danen, Vincent (May 5, 2008). "Try IRC with Irssi to communicate via chat". TechRepublic. ZDnetAsia.com. Archived from the original on December 27, 2009. Retrieved 2010-10-18.
  6. Sirainen, Timo. "About". Irssi.org. Archived from the original on 2001-04-05.
  7. Van der Gaast, Wilmer (2004). "Enhance irssi with Perl". In Paul Mutton (ed.). IRC hacks. O'Reilly Books. p. 84. ISBN 0-596-00687-X.
  8. SILC encryption plugin. penguin-breeder.org
  9. FiSH encryption plugin. Secure.la.
  10. ICQ plugin sourcecode Archived 2006-07-19 at the Wayback Machine. berlios.de.
  11. Didier, Colin Jabber/Xmpp plugin. cybione.org.
  12. "irssi-1.1.1p0 – modular IRC client with many features (ipv6, socks, proxy)". OpenBSD ports. 2018-02-27. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
  13. Downloads. irssi.org.
  14. "Arch Linux - Package Database". archlinux.org.
  15. "NixOS - Package Database". nixos.org.
  16. "Download". Irssi.org. Archived from the original on 2006-11-15.
  17. Smykil, Jeff (August 21, 2005). "In the Loop with Tim Hatcher". Ars Technica
  18. Hatcher, Tim (February 11, 2006). "Changeset 3129: Remove Irssi from the project" Archived 2008-10-14 at the Wayback Machine. Colloquy.info.
External links