What are the best IRC clients for Mac?

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score 57 · Accepted Answer

Textual

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Top Pro

Native to Mac

Textual was developed just for Mac, so there's no need to worry about compatibility issues. It can be downloaded straight from the App Store and takes full advantage of Macs native features such as the Notification Center. See More

Top Con

Requires payment (unless compiled from source)

Textual is a paid product, but can be used for free if you compile it yourself. See More

Ray's Experience

Textual is the only GUI IRC client I've used on macOS that has a customizable modern-looking UI. It's feature-complete with really straightforward configuration, and there's also full theming support. It's an amazing piece of open source software, and the best part is you can use it for free if you build it yourself (see: https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual#building-textual). See More

Top Pro

Designed with simplicity in mind

Textual was built to be simple and easy to use. It is very clean and has features for both IRC newbies and power-users. See More

Top Con

Unreliable when having network issues

If you are using VPNs, your connectivity with the IRC servers may drop and you will find it almost useless. It is able to reconnect, but is not able to rejoin the channels when it reconnects. See More

Top Pro

Regularly maintained and updated

The team at textual is always working on updating and getting rid of bugs in Textual which means its always improving. See More

Top Pro

Full-featured

Textual provides a wide range of features for any level of IRC user. It has basic options such as: Native Fullscreen support Native Notification Center support Wide range of keyboard shortcuts And plenty of other basic features you would expect from a quality IRC client. It also has a plethora of advanced features for those looking to get under the hood: SOCK4 and SOCK5 support Full, native support for IPv6 users. Direct Client-to-Client (DCC) file transfer support And many other customization options, such as theming. See More

Top Pro

Can be used for free if you build it yourself

Textual is open source and includes instructions for building it. You can set the TEXTUAL_BUILT_WITH_LICENSE_MANAGER flag to 0 to skip trial/license popups. See More

Top Pro

ZNC integration

Support for ZNC out of the box, including history. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Source code is available here. See More

Top Pro

Full, native support for IPv6

Top Pro

Proxy support

Textual can proxy your connection to IRC servers through SOCKS4 / SOCKS5 on a per-server basis. See More

See All

The Best 2 of 7 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for Textual

My Recommendation for Textual

Native to Mac

Requires payment (unless compiled from source)

Designed with simplicity in mind

Unreliable when having network issues

Regularly maintained and updated

Full-featured

Can be used for free if you build it yourself

ZNC integration

Open source

Full, native support for IPv6

Proxy support

My Recommendation for LimeChat

My Recommendation for LimeChat

Native support for the Notification Center

No way to search chat logs within LimeChat

Free and Open Source

Console-like interface

Fast and lightweight

Full range of keyboard shortcuts

Includes many useful features

5 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Colloquy

My Recommendation for Colloquy

Free and Open Source

No longer supported

Nice Native Design

No way to search chat logs within Colloquy

Has pretty themes like iOS "bubbles"

Works on macOS Mojave

Plenty of advanced features

Supports SILC and ICB

Mobile version

My Recommendation for WeeChat

My Recommendation for WeeChat

Terminal-based

No official GUI option

Fully keyboard driven

Scripting API allows poorly written scripts to be used as attack vectors

Extensible via plugins and scripts

Highly customizable and configurable

Open Source

Has scripting plugins

Incredibly customizable

Supports SASL and SSL

Incredibly extendable

Very lightweight

My Recommendation for Linkinus 2

My Recommendation for Linkinus 2

Abandonware

Searchable Logs

More expensive than most IRC clients

An extensive feature set.

No Notification Center support.

Major improvements over first version.

My Recommendation for Irssi

My Recommendation for Irssi

Persistent connection

Not the easiest to get going

Perl Scripting

Themes

Send command line outputs to a channel or message.

My Recommendation for XChat Azure

My Recommendation for XChat Azure

Does not remember preferences, crashes frequently

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My Recommendation for Adium

My Recommendation for Adium

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