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Comment by bkircher | Hacker News Reader

Love IRC. But what client should I use on my telephone?

It might seem weird, and probably will not please everyone, but in my experience, using an XMPP client (Conversations) along with biboumi (an XMPP <-> IRC bridge, https://biboumi.louiz.org (note: I'm the author)) is the best way to use IRC on mobile:

- You can idle in the channels without doing hundreds of part/join when your phone loses the connection

- You get the full backlog of what was said while your phone was offline

And you can host just one biboumi instance for all your users. You can even configure it to connect to just one IRC server. The users just have to join channels like #nodejs@irc.myxmppserver.com

This is exactly what I do - I use Conversations and biboumi to idle in a bunch of channels for various projects I'm watching.

Thanks louiz! You do good work!

I have a $5/mo VPS on DigitalOcean that I run IRSSI in screen/tmux. On Android, you can use JuiceSSH. Many people use this combination actually, JuiceSSH has swipe left-right IRSSI shortcuts and you can read the scrollback you missed (no ping timeouts on a VPS). Swipe left-right can also be changed to window left-right in screen/tmux. I think my favorite feature is JuiceSSH has an input option that allows you to use your standard Swype-like keyboard or voice input.

You can use a self hosted client like The Lounge which maintains IRC connections on your own server, and then you can view the client via a web browser (so it looks great on a phone, and you can get web push notifications)

It basically acts like any other chat client (e.g. works on multiple devices at the same time)

https://thelounge.chat https://demo.thelounge.chat

Sure. However simplicity is quite important when you choose IRC as company chat solution and you want not only your geeky devs to join but also not–so–geeky people like the guy from marketing and the friendly folks from the front–desk.

You only need to setup Lounge once, it supports multiple users at the same time. A non geeky person should have no trouble joining a channel.

Oh, wow. I see. With push notifications, mobile clients, TLS encryption this _could_ work in a company setting …provided you keep logs and make search results available for staff, too. Cool. Thanks for the links!

Logs are kept as text files and in a MySQL database (as of v3, which should be released soon™)

Searching logs is currently being worked on, you can see an MVP here - https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge/pull/2627

I don't know about iPhones, but for Android there is 'IRC for Android' which had so far been excellent.

On iOS I am extremely happy with Palaver. There’s a ZNC plugin to send you notifications when you are mentioned, if that is something you need or want.

It’s not free, but I think it was around the $2 mark and definitely worth the money.

I run a quassel server, and then use quasseldroid from my phone and quassel client from computers to access it.

I use(d) IRCCloud. The paid version ($5/month) works very well too, as it also acts as a bouncer.

If you get a weechat instance set up, you can then connect to that via the glowing bear app.

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