WeeChat

WeeChat (Wee Enhanced Environment for Chat) is a free chat client, fast and light, designed for many operating systems.
It is highly customizable and extensible with scripts.

Homepage: https://weechat.org/

• Modular chat client: WeeChat has a lightweight core and optional plugins. All plugins (including IRC) are independent and can be unloaded.
• Multi-platform: WeeChat runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, GNU/Hurd, Haiku, macOS and Windows (WSL and Cygwin).
• Multi-protocol: WeeChat is designed to support multiple protocols via plugins, like IRC.
• Standards-compliant: the IRC plugin is compliant with RFCs 1459, 2810, 2811, 2812, 2813 and 7194.
• Small, fast, and very light: the core is and should stay as light and fast as possible.
• Customizable and extensible: there are a lot of options to customize WeeChat, and it is extensible with C plugins and scripts (Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua, Tcl, Scheme, JavaScript and PHP).
• Remote access: WeeChat can run in background (weechat-headless) and, with the relay plugin, be used from remote interfaces (including WeeChat itself) or act as an IRC proxy.
• Upgrade without quitting: the /upgrade command reloads the new WeeChat binary in place, keeping the buffer contents and connections to servers (TLS connections are restored automatically).
• Fully documented: there is comprehensive documentation, which is translated into several languages.
• Developed from scratch: WeeChat was built from scratch and is not based on any other client.
• Free software: WeeChat is released under GPLv3.

On WeeChat's website you can find more screenshots.

WeeChat can be installed using your favorite package manager (recommended) or by compiling it yourself.
For detailed instructions, please check the WeeChat user's guide.

The main dependencies are a C compiler, CMake, pkg-config, ncurses, libcurl, libgcrypt, GnuTLS and zlib; many others are optional (zstd, gettext, scripting languages, etc.).
See the full list of dependencies.

To build and install WeeChat in your home directory:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/.local
make
make install

CMake options can be given with -DOPTION=VALUE, for example:

• -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug: build with debug info (recommended if you are using a development version)
• -DENABLE_PHP=OFF: disable a plugin (here the PHP plugin)
• -DENABLE_DOC=ON -DENABLE_MAN=ON: build HTML documentation and man page
• -DENABLE_TESTS=ON: build tests (run them with ctest -V)

See the list of CMake options.

Start WeeChat with the command weechat, then add an IRC server, connect to it and join a channel:

/server add libera irc.libera.chat
/connect libera
/join #weechat

Help is available in WeeChat with /help (list of commands) and /help <command> or /help <option>, and options can be browsed and changed with /fset.

For more information, see the quick start guide.

The man pages are available with man weechat and man weechat-headless.
All the documentation is available in several languages.

• IRC (recommended): channels #weechat (English) and #weechat-fr (French) on server irc.libera.chat.
• Bugs and feature requests: GitHub issues.

See the support page for more information.

Bug reports, feature requests, translations and pull requests are welcome; please read CONTRIBUTING.md first.
Before submitting a pull request, please read the coding rules and the commit message format in the developer's guide.

Please DO NOT file a GitHub issue for security related problems; see SECURITY.md to report a vulnerability.

WeeChat follows "practical" semantic versioning; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

A new minor version is released approximately every four months, and patch versions are released in between when needed, to fix severe bugs or security issues.

Only the latest stable version of WeeChat is supported; see SECURITY.md.

The changes in each version are listed in CHANGELOG.md, and the manual actions required when upgrading are listed in UPGRADING.md.

Copyright © 2003-2026 Sébastien Helleu

This file is part of WeeChat, the extensible chat client.

WeeChat is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

WeeChat is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with WeeChat. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.