Using the Weechat IRC Client: Quick Overview

Now, I've always used a graphical IRC client since I got into it. I recently got into Weechat because of how lightweight it is. It has a slight learning curve, but the commands are pretty easy to learn and it has a /help command that's similar to the manpages.

When you first open up Weechat, it should have one buffer open. You can see it says 1 followed by weechat. At first you need to add and connect to a server. We will connect to FreeNode IRC in this tutorial.

Type this in:

/server add fn chat.freenode.net/6697 --autoconnect --ssl

Now you will have a server to connect to next time you open Weechat. If you connect to fn, it will use your system username. If you don't want that, type this command:

/set irc.server.fn.nicks "mynick,mynick2,mynick3,mynick4,mynick5"

You can write the nicks you want first to your second choices. If you registered a nick already using NickServ, you can just type one.

To get SASL authentication, here's the guide on how to do that from the Freenode knowledge base.

Now you can connect to freenode. Type this (of course this will also happen if you reopen weechat):

/connect fn

Now it should connect to freenode. You can use IRC commands to go into channels etc. For example to connect to ##linux, you typr /join ##linux. To go through your channels you press alt followed by the buffer number.

That concludes my post. This showed you how to use weechat, not IRC, so you will have to figure out how to use IRC itself with another guide. If you have any questions or comments, please put them in the comments or DM me on mastodon.