An mIRC-inspired IRC client for the terminal. It looks and works like the mIRC you remember, menus, switchbar, treebar, nicklist popups, Address Book and all, and connects through a soju bouncer, which keeps you online and keeps your history while trout is closed. No bouncer? trout sets one up for you.
trout is a hobby project. There's no hosted service and nothing to sign up for.
- A terminal with mouse support and 24-bit color: iTerm2, Ghostty, kitty, WezTerm, Alacritty, Windows Terminal, GNOME Terminal, Konsole.
- A bouncer, or not: trout connects to a soju you already have, sets one up on a Linux server you can SSH into or on a new server at Hetzner Cloud, DigitalOcean or Google Cloud's free tier, or runs one itself on this computer while it's open.
- Go 1.26 or later to build it.
brew install --cask maxrenaud/tap/trout # macOS and Linux
trout # the Connect dialog the first time, then your saved bouncer
trout --demo # a fake world, no network: look around firstOr download an archive for macOS, Linux or Windows (Intel/AMD or ARM; linux_armv6 is
for 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS) from Releases
and run trout from where you unpack it: the soju it installs and runs comes in the same
archive, next to it. From source, go install github.com/MaxRenaud/trout/cmd/trout@latest
works too, and dev/build-soju builds that soju.
trout checks for a new version once a day when it starts (Options > Other turns that off;
Help > Check for Updates checks now) and puts it in the way you installed it: with
Homebrew, or by replacing the unpacked archive's files where they are. go install gets
told the command.
trout isn't signed yet. Homebrew takes care of that on macOS; from a downloaded archive,
macOS says it can't check trout: run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine on the unpacked
folder once. On Windows, SmartScreen may warn the first time: More info, then Run anyway.
The first run asks for the bouncer's address (ircs://host[:port]), user and password,
or offers to set one up (Set One Up) or to run one here (This Computer).
The password goes in a credentials file (mode 0600) next to config.toml, in your
config folder (~/Library/Application Support/trout on macOS, ~/.config/trout on
Linux, %AppData%\trout on Windows). Over TLS, after a password login, trout asks the
bouncer to remember this computer's certificate and logs in with that from then on.
Flags and environment variables override the config: --addr / TROUT_ADDR,
--user / TROUT_USER, --password / TROUT_PASSWORD, --config / TROUT_CONFIG,
--bouncer to pick a saved one. password-command in config.toml runs a command such as
pass show soju for the password.
Bouncer > Set Up Bouncer installs soju for you: on a Linux server you can SSH into (it uses
your own ssh, so ~/.ssh/config and your agent just work, and sudo, a sudo password or a
command you run yourself for root), or on a new server it makes at Hetzner Cloud,
DigitalOcean or Google Cloud (pick a region, see the price, Create Server). It makes a TLS
key and pins it, so there's no domain to buy, checks the bouncer by logging in, and moves
your networks onto it. Bouncer > Bouncers updates or removes it later, deleting the server
too.
Phones and web browsers don't know that pinned key, so last of all it offers a certificate from Let's Encrypt, which vouches for IP addresses too (later: Bouncer > Bouncers > Server > Certificate). trout puts a small helper, trout-cert, on the server; it gets the certificate for the same key, so the pin still holds, and a timer renews it every few days. Let's Encrypt checks the server over port 80, so that port has to be open to everyone, in the server's firewall and at your provider (trout opens it in ufw and firewalld). Getting one accepts Let's Encrypt's Subscriber Agreement; there's no email to give.
This Computer runs soju right here instead, while trout is open, for when there's no server. Bouncer > Connect a Phone shows a QR code that opens your bouncer in Goguma (iPhone and Android), which gets soju's push notifications; without a Let's Encrypt certificate, it shows the SHA-1 Goguma asks you to accept. With one, its Browser button gives a link to gamja, soju's web client, on trout's page (trout-irc.github.io), for any browser.
- mIRC's layout: menubar, toolbar, switchbar, treebar, nicklist, the editbox, Windows 98 dialogs, and mIRC's colors and formatting codes (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U...).
- The bouncer's networks as mIRC's servers: Connect, Disconnect, Select Server and
/servergo through soju, with a list of 25 big networks to add from. The Bouncer menu has its settings: networks and their on-connect commands, channels (detach and what you hear while detached), your names and password, and users if you're its admin. - History: windows fill in from the bouncer, read markers sync with your other clients, Ctrl+F can search the bouncer's whole history.
- Channel Central (modes, bans, exceptions, invites, topics), the Channels List, Favorites, the Address Book (notify, ignore, auto-op and protect, nick colors, highlights), Perform, CTCP, DCC Get and Chat, Send File through the bouncer's file host, URL catching, timestamps, the line marker, Options pages and the Colors dialog.
- The multi-line editbox (Alt+Enter), the second editbox (Alt+Q), per-window options in each button's popup, a proxy (SOCKS4, SOCKS5, HTTP) for the bouncer and DCC.
- mIRC scripts and the Scripts Editor (see Scripting).
- Ten color themes, from green phosphor to Nord, and your own (see Themes).
F1 lists the keys. Right-click, Ctrl+click or a long press opens popups.
trout runs mIRC scripts: aliases, popups, events, variables, timers, hash tables, files
and the Users list, for the scripts that automate things (auto-op, greetings, !seen,
trivia). The Scripts Editor (Tools > Scripts Editor, or Alt+R) works like mIRC's, with its Aliases,
Popups, Remote, Users and Variables tabs and its files, so yours can be copied over. Every
right-click menu comes from popups.ini, so you can change them. Not mIRC's dialogs,
custom windows or DLLs, which need Windows. See docs/scripting.md.
View > Themes, or the Scheme list in Tools > Colors: Green Phosphor, Amber, DOS Blue, BBS,
Classic (mIRC's own colors, the default), High Contrast, Solarized, Gruvbox, Dark and
Nord. F2 switches between Classic and Dark. The Colors dialog then changes any kind of
text to one of the theme's 16 colors, like mIRC's. To make your own, put a .toml file
in the themes folder next to config.toml: it starts from a built-in theme and
changes the colors you list. See docs/themes.md.
Mac: Alt is Option. trout's Alt shortcuts need the Option key to send Alt, as in WeeChat or Emacs. trout checks at startup and offers to fix it: in iTerm2 it uses a copy of your profile with the left Option key as Alt while trout runs; in kitty and Ghostty it adds one line to their config; elsewhere it shows the setting to change. Ctrl+J also starts a new line in the editbox.
Tips (mIRC's notifications): while the terminal isn't in front, highlights and
private messages show as desktop notifications in iTerm2, Ghostty, kitty, WezTerm and foot.
Turn them off in Options > Display or with /tips off.
tmux works. For the mouse, focus (for the bell and tips), tips and 24-bit color, put
this in ~/.tmux.conf (the last line names your outer terminal's TERM):
set -g mouse on
set -s focus-events on
set -s escape-time 10
set -g allow-passthrough on
set -as terminal-features ',xterm-256color:RGB'
GNU screen works, in 256 colors: screen 4 can't show 24-bit color, so trout doesn't
send it there (or to the Linux console, which gets 16). If colors look wrong, set
TROUT_COLORS to 24bit, 256 or 16 (24bit for screen 5 with truecolor on).
Windows: tested on Windows 11 in Windows Terminal, This Computer and Set Up Bouncer included (it uses Windows' own OpenSSH).
docker compose -f dev/compose.yaml up -d --build starts two IRC networks, soju and a
chatty bot; dev/trout connects to it. go test ./... runs the unit and screen tests;
go test -tags integration ./internal/ui runs against the dev servers. See
docs/dev-environment.md and docs/architecture.md. dev/vhs/record records the GIFs
here from dev/vhs/*.tape, in VHS's container.
MIT (see LICENSE). The soju trout installs and runs is a separate program under the GNU
AGPL v3; release archives include its license and where its source is.