Getting Started with irssi

Irssi is a fabulous IRC client, which runs on the command line. I’m sure I don’t use half the features it offers but its very stable, unintrusive ( you can run it in a background terminal, or even leave it running in a detached screen process ), and frankly excellent. Because I don’t have to set up irssi very often, I always have to look up how to do it – here’s the quick start guide (and remember you can use any of the commands with a “help” argument to get instructions)

First of all, we create a network

/network add -nick  -user  

/network add -nick fred -user fred freenode

Next up, we add a server to the network – this step is so we can add a number of alternative servers for the same network, I never do though.

/server add -noauto -network  

/server add -noauto -network freenode irc.freenode.net

You can also use -auto rather than -noauto above to reconnect to this network every time you use irssi.

Finally, we connect.

/connect 

/connect freenode

5 thoughts on “Getting Started with irssi

  1. Any reason you -noauto the server connection? I hate having to startup and remember to type /connect freenode personally.

    You should probably show how to add channels as well, /channel add [-auto] #name

  2. Caius: I have some connections on -auto and some on -noauto, depending how often I use them. I didn’t show the channel think because I always manually join channels, I get fed up of people who auto join but never say anything or join in. And personally I often dip into different channels depending what I’m doing.

  3. To make this blogpost a bit more helpful than it already is: if you’re not that interested in typing commands into irssi itself, you might want to check out the file ~/.irssi/config.

    It’s a JSON config file, which I think is easier to edit than typing /server add etc.

  4. Chris: glad to be of service :)

    berry_: oh, that’s a good tip! I always just type but then I like typing. You can type stuff in as I showed above, then do /save and copy and/or edit the config file you mention I think. Thanks for commenting!

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