Here’s the Deal

Colloquy vs Textual

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When comparing Colloquy vs Textual, the Slant community recommends Textual for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Mac?” Textual is ranked 1st while Colloquy 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.

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Common Questions

What are the best IRC clients for Mac?

Colloquy

Textual

Pros

Pro
Free and Open Source

Pro
Nice Native Design

Colloquy was designed with the Mac OSX interface conventions in mind, so it's got a native look and feel.

Pro
Works on macOS Mojave

Although not supported anymore, it's been confirmed to work on Mojave.

Pro
Has pretty themes like iOS "bubbles"

Pro
Plenty of advanced features

Colloquy has many of the features an advanced user would need, such as file transfer support, and even support for mIRC colors. It supports scripting via AppleScript.

Pro
Supports SILC and ICB

Pro
Mobile version

Colloquy also has an iPhone version for IRC on the go with many of the same features.

Pro
Native to Mac

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.

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Cons

Con
No longer supported

The app will not work on the latest releases of OSX as it has not been updated since 2014.

Con
No way to search chat logs within Colloquy

Chat logs are not viewable within the app. You must go to the directory and open the file with a text editor.

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.