When comparing Textual vs WeeChat, the Slant community recommends Textual for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Mac?” Textual is ranked 2nd while WeeChat is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Textual is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pro Open source
Source code is available here.
Pro Proxy support
Textual can proxy your connection to IRC servers through SOCKS4 / SOCKS5 on a per-server basis.
Pro Full, native support for IPv6
Pro ZNC integration
Support for ZNC out of the box, including history.
Pro Terminal-based
WeeChat has a command line interface.
Pro Accessible to less expert users out of the box
WeeChat has an easy to use interface and sane defaults, making it a great client for beginner users.
Pro Builtin SSL support
Easy to configure weechat connect to server using certificates
Pro Highly customizable and configurable
Many dotfiles are publicly available.
Pro Flexible window splitting
Weechat allows very flexible window splitting behavior to show multiple IRC channels at once. Windows can be split vertically and horizontally.
Pro Fully keyboard driven
Weechat can be fully driven by keyboard shortcuts. Navigating between buffers, switching between windows and changing text styling can all be achieved with keyboard shortcuts.
Pro Extensible via plugins and scripts
Supports scripting in C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Lua, Tcl, Scheme and Javascript.
Pro Persistent connection
Works perfectly with a poor connection.
Pro Smart filtering
Smart filtering lets set a series of rules for IRC channels. For example, it allows instructing the client to show /quit and /join messages only if the user was speaking in the last 20 minutes.
Pro Free and open source
WeeChat is a free program licensed under GPL with source code available on GitHub.
Pro Can act as a relay for mobile client
It's possible to leave WeeChat running at home/on a server, then connect to it with a smartphone client. This way a choppy mobile internet connection won't disconnect from IRC, and still allow using a touch screen optimized UI.
Pro Active and helpful community support
Weechat community can be found on #weechat @ Freenode. The community, including devs, is helpful in answering any WeeChat related questions.
Pro Built-in script manager
WeeChat has a built-in tool for searching, downloading, installing and updating scripts and plugins.
Pro Intuitive, detail-oriented interface
By default WeeChat has a chat area surrounded by a nicklist on the right, title bar on top, and status and input bars at the bottom. The layout, though, can be completely customized and split vertically or horizontally. It supports 256 colors as long as the terminal supports 256 colors as well as bolded, italicized and underlined text. Even includes little touches as differently colored nicknames for people /away.
Pro Huge library of scripts
WeeChat scripts repository has hundreds of scripts including url shorteners, music player integrations and bandwidth monitors.
Pro Mouse support
Mouse click and gestures are supported on a local terminal as well as remote terminal accessed via ssh regardless of screen/tmux. To enable mouse support use /mouse enable
command or press alt+m
.
Pro Easy to customize
You are able to modify configurations inside application or via modifying files(i.e. colors).
Pro Actively developed
Pro Offers a choice of remote interfaces
WeeChat has html5, qt, android, emacs and javascript remote interface options.
Pro Incremental text search
Text is searched through in real time as search terms are being written.
Cons
Con No DCC chat support
Con Requires payment (unless compiled from source)
Textual is a paid product, but can be used for free if you compile it yourself.
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.
Con No official GUI option
While there are some unofficial remote graphical interfaces available for WeeChat, it is intended to be used as a terminal client. As such it might be challenging to use to those accustomed to graphical interfaces.
Con Scripting API allows poorly written scripts to be used as attack vectors
Plugin documentation includes the following warning:
In many functions, for speed reasons, WeeChat does not check if your pointer is correct or not. It’s your job to check you’re giving a valid pointer, otherwise you may see a nice crash report ;)