Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why doesn’t irssi display colors even when ircii etc. displays them?
A: They force ANSI colors even if terminal doesn’t support them. By default,
   irssi uses colors only if terminfo/termcap so says. The correct way to fix this
   would be to change your TERM environment to a value where colors work, like
   xterm-color or color_xterm (eg. TERM=xterm-color irssi). If this doesn’t help,
   then use the evil way of /SET term_force_colors ON.

Q: How do I easily write text to channel that starts with ‘/’ character?
A: / /text

Q: Why doesn’t irssi update my realname (or whatever) after I change it with /
   SET realname and reconnect with /RECONNECT or /SERVER?
A: Irssi is trying to be too smart. This will be fixed in future, but for now
   you should use /DISCONNECT and /CONNECT.

Q: I connected to some server which isn’t responding but now irssi tries to
   connect back to it all the time! How can I stop it?
A: Two ways. The “good way” to do it is with /DISCONNECT. Check the server tags
   first with /SERVER without giving it any parameters, reconnections are those
   that have tag starting with “recon” text. So most probably you’re going to do /
   DISCONNECT recon-1. The other way is to remove all the reconnections with /
   RMRECONNS, easier but may remove some connections you actually wanted to
   reconnect (if you used multiple servers..).

Q: How do I add seconds to timestamp?
A: /FORMAT timestamp {timestamp %%H:%%M:%%S} - and remember to add the trailing
   space :)

Q: Why does irssi say “Irssi: Channel not fully synchronized yet, try again
   after a while” when I try to use /BAN etc?
A: Possibly a bug in irssi, or ircd you’re using does something that irssi
   didn’t really notice. The new code should make this happen far less often than
   before, but one known reason for this is when irssi doesn’t notice that you
   were unable to join some channel. Currently however I don’t know of any such
   events irssi doesn’t know about.

   Anyway, if this does happen, do /RAWLOG SAVE ~/rawlog soon after joining to
   channel, and either try to figure out yourself why irssi didn’t get reply to
   WHO request, or open a Github issue with the full log included. Note that the
   rawlog is by default only 200 lines and it may not be enough to show all needed
   information, so you might want to do /SET rawlog_lines 1000 or so.

   MODE +b still works fine though.

Q: Where’s the GUI version?
A: There was one on [1]irssi-import/xirssi but it has not been maintained for a
   long time.

Q: How do I autorejoin channels after being kicked?
A: That’s evil and you shouldn’t do it. If you get kicked, you should stay out,
   at least until the channel forgot you existed :) Most channels I’ve joined just
   ban you if you autorejoin after kick. If you’re joined to channels who kick
   people for fun, try changing channels or something.

   Anyway, if you REALLY want to do that, and you understand that you’re doing
   evilness, you can use the autorejoin.pl script that comes with irssi. You’ll
   still need to specify the channels you wish to rejoin with /SET
   autorejoin_channels #chan1 #chan2 ...

Q: How do I announce that I’m away/back in all channels I’ve joined? Or how do
   I change my nick when setting myself away/back?
A: That’s even worse than autorejoin. Who could possibly care every time you
   come and go? Many channels will kick you for using this, and I for example have
   added several ignores so I’d never need to see these messages. Learn to use /
   AWAY command properly and tell its existence to people who don’t know about it.
   /WII yournick shows your away reason much better for people who actually want
   to know if you’re there or not.

Q: Why does irssi autojoin on invite by default?
A: The setting is /SET join_auto_chans_on_invite - it’s not the same as regular
   autojoin-on-invite, which irssi doesn’t even have. The only channels that are
   joined on invite, are the ones you’ve added to config with /CHANNEL ADD -auto.
   This is very useful with +i channels when you need to first send an invite
   request to bot, or if you get accidentally kicked from channel, the kicker can
   invite you back immediately.

   I don’t see any bad side effects with this feature, so it’s ON by default. I
   guess someone could start kicking/inviting you all the time but server
   connection shouldn’t drop because of that, and you shouldn’t join channels
   whose operators are that evil.

Q: How to make UTF-8 support work with irssi?
A: Make sure your terminal supports UTF-8 (for example, xterm -u8). If you use
   screen, you may have to do screen -U. And in Irssi do /SET term_charset utf-8.
   (for 0.8.9 and older: /SET term_type utf-8)

Q: Will there be /DETACH-like feature?
A: [2]tmux, [3]screen and [4]dtach can be used to do it just fine.

Q: How do I run scripts automatically at startup?
A: Put them into ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun/ directory. Or better would be if you
   placed them in ~/.irssi/scripts/ and created symlinks to autorun directory (eg.
   cd ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun/ ; ln -s ../script.pl .)

Q: How do I execute commands automatically at startup?
A: Put them into ~/.irssi/startup file, each command on its own line. The
   preceding slash (/) is not necessary.

Q: How do I easily edit existing topic?
A: /TOPIC <tab>

Q: How can I have /WHOIS replies to active window?
A: You can disable the status window, or do /WINDOW LEVEL -CRAP in it which
   would also make several other messages show up in active window. You can also
   use a [5]script.

Q: How do I add the active network to the statusbar
A: Modify the window-line in statusbar section in config file to window = "{sb
   $winref:$tag/$T{sbmode $M}}";

Q: How to pronounce Irssi?
A: Check [6]here


   References:

   [1] https://github.com/irssi-import/xirssi
   [2] http://tmux.github.io/
   [3] http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/screen.html
   [4] http://dtach.sf.net/
   [5] http://dgl.cx/irssi/hack-whois-in-current-window.pl
   [6] https://irssi.org/assets/irssi.wav