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As I primarily use IRC now, I've deep dived into the world of IRC clients. So far, I've tried irssi, weechat, catgirl, ii. My favorites are weechat and catgirl, I'll focus on the former here.
Weechat is available on a plethora of platforms, so see how to get it for your respective platform. Once you start it, you'll be greeted with the main menu.
We'll start by disabling auto logging for additional privacy.
/set logger.file.auto_log off
If you only want to disable logging in a specific channel, do the following while in the channel.
/logger disable
If you're a frequent member of big servers, like LiberaChat, you'll surely get annoyed at all the joining and leaving happening, so here's a way to disable it for members that haven't spoke recently.
/filter add irc_smart * irc_smart_filter *
If you want to disable it for everyone and not see join/leave messages at all, do the following.
/filter add joinquit * irc_join,irc_part,irc_quit *
By default, Weechat sends a lot of metadata. For additional privacy, we'll disable it.
/set irc.ctcp.clientinfo "" /set irc.ctcp.finger "" /set irc.ctcp.source "" /set irc.ctcp.time "" /set irc.ctcp.userinfo "" /set irc.ctcp.version "" /set irc.ctcp.ping ""
Next, we'll enable downloading scripts in order to get quality of life improvements.
/set script.scripts.download_enabled true
We'll get the following scripts.
/script install autosort.py /script install highmon.pl /script install colorize_nicks.py /script install apply_corrections.py
We'll also enable sane channel sorting with autosort.py. All channels of a server will be under that server's buffer.
/set irc.look.server_buffer independent
To find nicks more easily, we'll enable nick colors in the nick list.
/set irc.look.color_nicks_in_nicklist on
To see if someone is away more easily, we'll enable offline nicks.
/set weechat.look.color_nick_offline yes
To add a server secured with TLS, and configure SASL for it, do the following.
/server add servername irc.server.net/6697 -ssl /set irc.server.servername.sasl_mechanism PLAIN /set irc.server.servername.sasl_username yourusername /set irc.server.servername.sasl_password yourpassword
If you plan to not use the file transfer feature, disable it for improved security.
/plugin unload xfer /set weechat.plugin.autoload "*,!xfer"
When you leave a channel, weechat automatically sets a quit message that shows your weechat version. To disable that, do the following.
/set irc.server_default.msg_part = "" /set irc.server_default.msg_quit = ""
If you dislike having the seconds in the timestamp, do the following.
/set weechat.look.buffer_time_format "%H:%M"
If you want to mimmick other IM programs, and show the nick only once if the sender is the same, do the following.
/set weechat.look.prefix_same_nick ""
If you don't plan to use any additional scripts, for improved security and lightness, unload the unneeded plugins.
/set weechat.plugin.autoload "*,!xfer,!fifo,!logger,!ruby,!lua,!tcl,!guile,!javascript,!php,!spell"
Once you're done configuring, make sure to save your settings.
/save