Cross-platform IRC clients

There are a large and growing number of cross-platform clients that run equally well on many different operating systems.

Halloy

Halloy is an open-source graphical IRC client written in Rust. It aims to provide a simple and fast client for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms.

HexChat

The popular XChat fork, HexChat, originated as an unofficial Windows port, and now runs on Linux/Unix systems as well. A OSX port is available through Homebrew.

Final Release: 2.16.2 - 09 Feb 2024

jIRCii

jIRCii is a barely graphical standalone Java client, with a look and feel inspired by ircII but taking advantage of modern GUI functionality.

Web Based Clients

Webchat interfaces are listed elsewhere, and are available anywhere there’s a working web browser.

Linux/Unix Clients on Windows

Many of the terminal-based Unix/Linux IRC clients have been ported to run on Windows with the aid of WSL, Cygwin or MSYS. These ported clients may be awkward to use if not comfortable with console-mode applications, and primarily cater to advanced users.

• irssi

The popular X11 client, xchat, also has a Windows version, which is a common alternative to mIRC on Windows systems.

Windows Clients on Linux/Unix/OSX

mIRC is known to work well with Wine.