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