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Show HN: Halloy – Modern IRC client

381 points by culinary-robot 11mo ago

I started working on Halloy back in 2022, with the goal of giving something back to the community I’ve been a part of for the past two decades. I wanted to create a modern, multi-platform IRC client written in Rust. Three years later, I’ve made new friends who have become core contributors, and there are now over 200 people idling in our #halloy channel on Libera. My hope is that this client will outlive me and that IRC will live on.

nakamoto_damacy 11mo ago
Excellent. I never liked mIRC, and for me the terminal was the best interface. But this looks good. I also still use vi. Never made the mental leap to vim. Old habits die hard.
rekabis 11mo ago
I cannot seem to find the exe/msi for Windows, or the dmg/pkg for MacOS, to install with. I am looking for the exe/msi installers for Windows, in particular, for the more extensive installation options they provide, including start menu entry placement. Yes, I abhor the Win8/8.1/10/11 start menu, and have been using StartIsBack for a traditional XP-style start menu, along with the All Programs fly-out. Being able to put start menu entries into specific categories allows me to sort and “clean up” the All Programs fly-out so that it isn’t as overwhelming. And no, I don’t like to just move the All Programs entry, because updates and upgrades of most programs just re-insert the default entry, cluttering everything up. As such, the installer needs to provide the user an option for where to put the Start Menu icons, so that the setting is saved in the registry for updates and upgrades to work with.
macmac 11mo ago
I use Halloy on a daily basis and could not be happier. It is super smooth in use and highly configurable using the config file. Halloy is also a great show case for the iced GUI framework and Rust for desktop apps.
- culinary-robot 11mo ago
  I am glad you like it, macmac.
BoredPositron 11mo ago
I switched to it some months ago and couldn't be happier. Was a die hard irssi user before but there are some parts of halloy that are just really convenient. Maybe I am getting older.
Daunk 11mo ago
I've tried to use this, but I'm on multiple servers with tons of channels, and it gets a bit unwieldy without tabs. I also can't get it to minimize to tray, and having to "keep it open" at all times is somewhat annoying. I'll stick with Quassel for now. Really impressive work though, you should be proud!
- mi100hael 11mo ago
  Agreed on the tabs. Not sure what I'm supposed to do when I have more than 1-2 channels I want to view.
- its-summertime 11mo ago
  to have it act a bit more tabishly, https://halloy.chat/configuration/actions.html#buffer https://halloy.chat/configuration/actions.html#buffer can be set to "replace-pane"
- tcdent 11mo ago
  What channels are still active? I connected to freenode for the first time in years a few months ago and it was a ghost town. Would love to get back into some programming/tech communities on IRC.
  - fuzzzerd 11mo ago
    Freenode melted down a few years back, there was a lot of drama around what happened, but I don't think it's active anymore and if it is, it's probably not what you remember. The community splintered and moved to other hosts.
  - QuantumNomad_ 11mo ago
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/major-internet-projects-are-leaving-freenode-after-korean-prince-takeover/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/major-internet-projects-are-... A lot of users left freenode in 2021. Many moved to Libera.chat instead. While others may have moved on from IRC altogether when they left freenode.
  - korse 11mo ago
crtasm 11mo ago
Can it show channel modes next to the #channel_name and my nick+user mode next to the input field? Two things I find very useful in weechat and couldn't work out how to do in Halloy last time I tried it out. Thanks for making a client.
- culinary-robot 11mo ago
  if you type /mode it should show the mode next to the channel name. this should happen automatically - will look into that. i'll also add the nick-user mode next to the input field. a few has requested it.
  - crtasm 11mo ago
    Thanks! Having both always visible would be ideal for me.
Insanity 11mo ago
Reminds me I haven't logged in to IRC in.. maybe 2-3 years now. It just kind of fizzled out as the main groups of people I interact with moved to Discord. But I kind of miss IRC.
dysoco 11mo ago
I haven't used IRC in years, but my teenage of ~12 years ago would've been stoked by this, it's the nicest client I've seen as of yet. Cheers!
ochronus 11mo ago
It's my go-to client. Kudos and thanks for developing it!
Vaslo 11mo ago
Not sure if this question will get removed but a tangent nonetheless - I’d like to use this but I don’t know what to do with it since the advent of Discord. What do people do with IRC now and where do you find content? I remember being a high school student and having an amazing physics conversation on IRC that included a description of Flatworld that really fascinated me.
- mfro 11mo ago
  These are some of the most active channels: https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Libera.Chat https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Libera.Chat There are some other nets listed on that site with somewhat lower usercounts: https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php
- trevithick 11mo ago
  I had the same question. I briefly joined the Slackware IRC a long, long time ago when I had questions, but now I wouldn't even know what to do with this client.
  - culinary-robot 11mo ago
    You find a community that shares the same interest as you and start chatting :)
- asnyder 11mo ago
  #freenode was generally the main IRC node I used with all the good dev rooms. Seems to still be chugging along. You can even join directly via their web-client: https://freenode.net https://freenode.net. Personally I still use pidgin.im to connect to all the relevant #freenode goodness. Seems people forget it still works and is pretty great even all these years later :).
  - crtasm 11mo ago
    I forgot Freenode was still running, most projects left for https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/ Due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_...
lksaar 11mo ago
Used to use Hexchat and swapped to halloy more than a year ago and couldn't be happier. The development is coming along nicely and a lot of modern features got added since I've been using it. It's a joy to use in conjunction with soju and my irc experience hasn't been this smooth in a long time.
nullwarp 11mo ago
Actually surprised I never stumbled on this while I was looking for an IRC client. I ended up on on The Lounge for a while and that's always been pretty good. Will give this a go because I would always prefer a native client in the first place and this looks excellent!
mobeigi 11mo ago
I'm amazed people still use IRC! More power to you. I used to use it a fair bit back in the day bit the last programming community that I was a part of that used IRC moved to Discord around 2020 which is when I basically stopped using it.
keyle 11mo ago
I use it, it's really good and getting better every release. It's fast and robust. The toml config is also straight forward. Highly recommended! PS: I preferred the old (bird) icon
mattfrommars 11mo ago
I've started to notice there are a lot more rust based desktop application appearing vs say Go based or Java. Most of these apps are cross platforms. My guess is they are trying to compete with Electron. There is Tauri runs on Rust. Can someone please tell me what special about Rust? Say, why aren't desktop application popular based on say Python? On tangent, ive seen a lot of terminal base application in typescript and go
- culinary-robot 11mo ago
  I have a background in macOS applications, back when it was Objective-C. I have always loved native apps. When i decided to start Halloy the goal was to create a native application for multiple platforms, and for that Rust is perfect.
- Rendello 11mo ago
  > Can someone please tell me what special about Rust? I think I've seen this topic pop up from time to time ;) For me personally, I've been replacing a lot of my Python programs with Rust. A lot of it isn't much harder to write, and things like sum types are sorely missed when I write Python or most non-Rust languages. And usually, if my Rust program is a lot more difficult to write, it's because I'm exploring an optimization that wouldn't be possible or worthwhile in Python. Having an application be native and compiled is a big plus for me. I plan to release a desktop app in Rust but it isn't at that stage yet.
- WD-42 11mo ago
  I am currently writing a desktop application in Rust. It’s a jellyfin client for music. I think the main reason is that writing Rust is a joy that gives you confidence. This is important to me as I often have small amounts of time to work on it (new dad). With rust I can start implementing a small feature, as long as it compiles I can be reasonably sure it works. In Python I’d be wading through a sea of runtime errors and never quite sure I actually got it right. Cross platform is another good reason. UI library support is good. You have iced like this app, but also decent GTK bindings. No runtime needed makes distribution and packaging infinitely easier than Python. It’s a great language for writing desktop apps.
righthand 11mo ago
I love Halloy and it inspired me to make more software in iced_rs, which is a fantastic simple to use UI framework. [0] The project is even often cited as a good iced_rs code reference repo. What I like about iced_rs over Qt is that you can write all your code in a single language in whichever style you like. As opposed to Qt which requires you learn an obtuse scripting language (qml) ontop of Cpp and locks performance improvements behind commercial license. [0] https://iced.rs/ https://iced.rs/
palata 11mo ago
Wow, that's really cool! I just adopted it :)
udev4096 11mo ago
Looks really great. But I am gonna stick to weechat :)
khimaros 11mo ago
i've been very happy with the combination of senpai on my laptop, goguna on Android, and soju on a cloud instance for persistence. i will try this as an alternative laptop frontend.
airstrike 11mo ago
halloy is not only an awesome app but a fantastic example if you want to learn more about building GUI software with iced. https://github.com/iced-rs/iced https://github.com/iced-rs/iced If you're interested in building a GUI app in Rust, I encourage you to go through the examples and showcase apps like halloy and if you get stuck, can ask our chill and helpful community on Discord https://discord.gg/3xZJ65GAhd https://discord.gg/3xZJ65GAhd
- rootlocus 11mo ago
  Funny enough, having close to zero experience with Rust and wanting to build an iced-rs application with Claude Code, I asked it to search github for large projects using iced-rs to use as a reference and Halloy ones one of the top 3.
- giancarlostoro 11mo ago
  I was just looking at that; I've been wanting a nice GUI library for Rust but never found one I liked. A number of them were bindings to other GUI stacks. I might try Iced next time I'm poking around with Rust.
T3RMINATED 11mo ago
[dead]
ryanmerket 11mo ago
Nice! I'll give it whirl. For those with terrible eyesight, do you offer accessibility options? EFNet for life!
- emersion 11mo ago
  AFAIU not yet because the underlying GUI framework doesn't support this, but the developer mentioned they'd definitely be interested in adding it.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
INTPenis 11mo ago
I'm sure Timo thought the same about irssi.
ComputerGuru 11mo ago
Wow, I used this when you first posted a public link to it and I see it’s come a long way since; I should definitely check it out again! Congrats on the success thus far!
- dang 11mo ago
  Here's the link for those curious: Show HN: Halloy – A GUI Application in Rust for IRC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535772 - June 2023 (101 comments)
SomeUserName432 11mo ago
I can't at the top of my head remember all the minor annoyances I ran into when I tried Halloy, but things like not being able to paste a large message because "it exceeds the single message limit" was a real dealbreaker. I ended up going for Crossover and mIRC
- goku12 11mo ago
  Please file bug reports or feature requests when you find them, if they haven't been filed already. Don't just leave silently. And not just for halloy, but for all FOSS projects in general. The developers/maintainers can choose what to do with them - but they'll at least be aware of the pain points. That too is a contribution to the projects that we use for free. PS: This assumes that you haven't done so. But even if you did, please leave it as a request to everyone else.
ClawsOnPaws 11mo ago
I'd love to test this, however it seems to not be accessible with screen readers. I assume this is because of the GUI library not supporting accessibility. I found an open issue about this on the Iced GitHub where in 2024 it was mentioned that the version after next should support it, and the last comment was in february of this year (https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552 https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552) I bookmarked this so hopefully once that effort gets further along I can give it a try! I figured I'd leave this comment so that some folks can see that there are real people even on HN who require these features and that accessibility work is always appreciated. We definitely exist :)
- nicoburns 11mo ago
  Iced also has a roadmap: https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM Screen reader accessibility is at least on it, although not until the release after next.
  - ClawsOnPaws 11mo ago
    Heh, that roadmap is also not accessible to screen readers, at least on FireFox. That's unfortunate. But I understand it's a big undertaking with little reward for most people. I do think there are UI libraries with AccessKit integration, egui I believe? Ah well. I'll check back on it every now and then either way.
    - sudahtigabulan 11mo ago
      > that roadmap is also not accessible to screen readers It also has terrible navigation on mobile, even for sighted users. I gave up after a few seconds of trying to use it.
fullstop 11mo ago
Hey, this looks pretty cool and it is very snappy compared to, say, Konversation. It would be fantastic if there was a way to add AppIndicator support and allow the main window to be closed.
slacktivism123 11mo ago
Thank you. Halloy is a wonderfully configurable replacement for beloved Mac IRC client Textual, whose development has sadly wound down (now officially, as of last month). I hope it continues to grow in popularity while keeping performance and privacy at the core.
patrick4urcloud 11mo ago
wow nice !
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
cassepipe 11mo ago
I love the general design of Halloy and I have submitted it to HN at least two times. Glad to see it on the front page ! Keep up the good work
denvermullets 11mo ago
ive been using halloy for almost a year(?) and i really dig it. you and the contributors should be proud. i dont hang out in #halloy but maybe i should!
nmz 11mo ago
Why is this "modern"?
- donio 11mo ago
  The extensive IRCv3 support for one thing. chathistory support in particular is a big one for me since we rely on it on my personal server. If you scroll down to the Features section on the linked page that gives a good overview.
  - guerby 11mo ago
    Hi, I'm used to save locally chat history of channels I'm listening to. In hexchat GUI client chat history is locally found in a simple text file, one line per message in .config/hexchat/logs/irc.libera.chat/xxx.log However I've found no option to create such a log with halloy, am I missing something in the documentation?
    - guerby 11mo ago
      Found https://github.com/squidowl/halloy/issues/91 https://github.com/squidowl/halloy/issues/91
deadbabe 11mo ago
The fact this is written in rust alone means it will be an instant install for me even though I don’t really use IRC :/
sammnaser 11mo ago
Awesome! Been running an IRC server and looking for a decent native client, the ecosystem seems to have frozen around the first Bush presidency so will definitely be trying this out.
Arch-TK 11mo ago
Is this why a bunch of people joined random Libera channels yesterday wondering why IRC is so great if nobody ever talks?
gompertz 11mo ago
This looks amazing. Based on the animated gif, I cant believe how better IRC looks with the text properly indented and separated from the username. Way less visual load!

381 points by culinary-robot 11mo ago

nakamoto_damacy 11mo ago

Excellent. I never liked mIRC, and for me the terminal was the best interface. But this looks good. I also still use vi. Never made the mental leap to vim. Old habits die hard.

rekabis 11mo ago

I cannot seem to find the exe/msi for Windows, or the dmg/pkg for MacOS, to install with. I am looking for the exe/msi installers for Windows, in particular, for the more extensive installation options they provide, including start menu entry placement. Yes, I abhor the Win8/8.1/10/11 start menu, and have been using StartIsBack for a traditional XP-style start menu, along with the All Programs fly-out. Being able to put start menu entries into specific categories allows me to sort and “clean up” the All Programs fly-out so that it isn’t as overwhelming. And no, I don’t like to just move the All Programs entry, because updates and upgrades of most programs just re-insert the default entry, cluttering everything up. As such, the installer needs to provide the user an option for where to put the Start Menu icons, so that the setting is saved in the registry for updates and upgrades to work with.

macmac 11mo ago

I use Halloy on a daily basis and could not be happier. It is super smooth in use and highly configurable using the config file. Halloy is also a great show case for the iced GUI framework and Rust for desktop apps.

culinary-robot 11mo ago
I am glad you like it, macmac.

BoredPositron 11mo ago

I switched to it some months ago and couldn't be happier. Was a die hard irssi user before but there are some parts of halloy that are just really convenient. Maybe I am getting older.

Daunk 11mo ago

I've tried to use this, but I'm on multiple servers with tons of channels, and it gets a bit unwieldy without tabs. I also can't get it to minimize to tray, and having to "keep it open" at all times is somewhat annoying. I'll stick with Quassel for now. Really impressive work though, you should be proud!

mi100hael 11mo ago
Agreed on the tabs. Not sure what I'm supposed to do when I have more than 1-2 channels I want to view.
its-summertime 11mo ago
to have it act a bit more tabishly, https://halloy.chat/configuration/actions.html#buffer https://halloy.chat/configuration/actions.html#buffer can be set to "replace-pane"
tcdent 11mo ago
What channels are still active? I connected to freenode for the first time in years a few months ago and it was a ghost town. Would love to get back into some programming/tech communities on IRC.
- fuzzzerd 11mo ago
  Freenode melted down a few years back, there was a lot of drama around what happened, but I don't think it's active anymore and if it is, it's probably not what you remember. The community splintered and moved to other hosts.
- QuantumNomad_ 11mo ago
  https://www.vice.com/en/article/major-internet-projects-are-leaving-freenode-after-korean-prince-takeover/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/major-internet-projects-are-... A lot of users left freenode in 2021. Many moved to Libera.chat instead. While others may have moved on from IRC altogether when they left freenode.
- korse 11mo ago

crtasm 11mo ago

Can it show channel modes next to the #channel_name and my nick+user mode next to the input field? Two things I find very useful in weechat and couldn't work out how to do in Halloy last time I tried it out. Thanks for making a client.

culinary-robot 11mo ago
if you type /mode it should show the mode next to the channel name. this should happen automatically - will look into that. i'll also add the nick-user mode next to the input field. a few has requested it.
- crtasm 11mo ago
  Thanks! Having both always visible would be ideal for me.

Insanity 11mo ago

Reminds me I haven't logged in to IRC in.. maybe 2-3 years now. It just kind of fizzled out as the main groups of people I interact with moved to Discord. But I kind of miss IRC.

dysoco 11mo ago

I haven't used IRC in years, but my teenage of ~12 years ago would've been stoked by this, it's the nicest client I've seen as of yet. Cheers!

ochronus 11mo ago

It's my go-to client. Kudos and thanks for developing it!

Vaslo 11mo ago

Not sure if this question will get removed but a tangent nonetheless - I’d like to use this but I don’t know what to do with it since the advent of Discord. What do people do with IRC now and where do you find content? I remember being a high school student and having an amazing physics conversation on IRC that included a description of Flatworld that really fascinated me.

mfro 11mo ago
These are some of the most active channels: https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Libera.Chat https://netsplit.de/channels/?net=Libera.Chat There are some other nets listed on that site with somewhat lower usercounts: https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top100.php
trevithick 11mo ago
I had the same question. I briefly joined the Slackware IRC a long, long time ago when I had questions, but now I wouldn't even know what to do with this client.
- culinary-robot 11mo ago
  You find a community that shares the same interest as you and start chatting :)
asnyder 11mo ago
#freenode was generally the main IRC node I used with all the good dev rooms. Seems to still be chugging along. You can even join directly via their web-client: https://freenode.net https://freenode.net. Personally I still use pidgin.im to connect to all the relevant #freenode goodness. Seems people forget it still works and is pretty great even all these years later :).
- crtasm 11mo ago
  I forgot Freenode was still running, most projects left for https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/ Due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_...

lksaar 11mo ago

Used to use Hexchat and swapped to halloy more than a year ago and couldn't be happier. The development is coming along nicely and a lot of modern features got added since I've been using it. It's a joy to use in conjunction with soju and my irc experience hasn't been this smooth in a long time.

nullwarp 11mo ago

Actually surprised I never stumbled on this while I was looking for an IRC client. I ended up on on The Lounge for a while and that's always been pretty good. Will give this a go because I would always prefer a native client in the first place and this looks excellent!

mobeigi 11mo ago

I'm amazed people still use IRC! More power to you. I used to use it a fair bit back in the day bit the last programming community that I was a part of that used IRC moved to Discord around 2020 which is when I basically stopped using it.

keyle 11mo ago

I use it, it's really good and getting better every release. It's fast and robust. The toml config is also straight forward. Highly recommended! PS: I preferred the old (bird) icon

mattfrommars 11mo ago

I've started to notice there are a lot more rust based desktop application appearing vs say Go based or Java. Most of these apps are cross platforms. My guess is they are trying to compete with Electron. There is Tauri runs on Rust. Can someone please tell me what special about Rust? Say, why aren't desktop application popular based on say Python? On tangent, ive seen a lot of terminal base application in typescript and go

culinary-robot 11mo ago
I have a background in macOS applications, back when it was Objective-C. I have always loved native apps. When i decided to start Halloy the goal was to create a native application for multiple platforms, and for that Rust is perfect.
Rendello 11mo ago
> Can someone please tell me what special about Rust? I think I've seen this topic pop up from time to time ;) For me personally, I've been replacing a lot of my Python programs with Rust. A lot of it isn't much harder to write, and things like sum types are sorely missed when I write Python or most non-Rust languages. And usually, if my Rust program is a lot more difficult to write, it's because I'm exploring an optimization that wouldn't be possible or worthwhile in Python. Having an application be native and compiled is a big plus for me. I plan to release a desktop app in Rust but it isn't at that stage yet.
WD-42 11mo ago
I am currently writing a desktop application in Rust. It’s a jellyfin client for music. I think the main reason is that writing Rust is a joy that gives you confidence. This is important to me as I often have small amounts of time to work on it (new dad). With rust I can start implementing a small feature, as long as it compiles I can be reasonably sure it works. In Python I’d be wading through a sea of runtime errors and never quite sure I actually got it right. Cross platform is another good reason. UI library support is good. You have iced like this app, but also decent GTK bindings. No runtime needed makes distribution and packaging infinitely easier than Python. It’s a great language for writing desktop apps.

righthand 11mo ago

I love Halloy and it inspired me to make more software in iced_rs, which is a fantastic simple to use UI framework. [0] The project is even often cited as a good iced_rs code reference repo. What I like about iced_rs over Qt is that you can write all your code in a single language in whichever style you like. As opposed to Qt which requires you learn an obtuse scripting language (qml) ontop of Cpp and locks performance improvements behind commercial license. [0] https://iced.rs/ https://iced.rs/

palata 11mo ago

Wow, that's really cool! I just adopted it :)

udev4096 11mo ago

Looks really great. But I am gonna stick to weechat :)

khimaros 11mo ago

i've been very happy with the combination of senpai on my laptop, goguna on Android, and soju on a cloud instance for persistence. i will try this as an alternative laptop frontend.

airstrike 11mo ago

halloy is not only an awesome app but a fantastic example if you want to learn more about building GUI software with iced. https://github.com/iced-rs/iced https://github.com/iced-rs/iced If you're interested in building a GUI app in Rust, I encourage you to go through the examples and showcase apps like halloy and if you get stuck, can ask our chill and helpful community on Discord https://discord.gg/3xZJ65GAhd https://discord.gg/3xZJ65GAhd

rootlocus 11mo ago
Funny enough, having close to zero experience with Rust and wanting to build an iced-rs application with Claude Code, I asked it to search github for large projects using iced-rs to use as a reference and Halloy ones one of the top 3.
giancarlostoro 11mo ago
I was just looking at that; I've been wanting a nice GUI library for Rust but never found one I liked. A number of them were bindings to other GUI stacks. I might try Iced next time I'm poking around with Rust.

T3RMINATED 11mo ago

[dead]

ryanmerket 11mo ago

Nice! I'll give it whirl. For those with terrible eyesight, do you offer accessibility options? EFNet for life!

emersion 11mo ago
AFAIU not yet because the underlying GUI framework doesn't support this, but the developer mentioned they'd definitely be interested in adding it.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

INTPenis 11mo ago

I'm sure Timo thought the same about irssi.

ComputerGuru 11mo ago

Wow, I used this when you first posted a public link to it and I see it’s come a long way since; I should definitely check it out again! Congrats on the success thus far!

dang 11mo ago
Here's the link for those curious: Show HN: Halloy – A GUI Application in Rust for IRC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535772 - June 2023 (101 comments)

SomeUserName432 11mo ago

I can't at the top of my head remember all the minor annoyances I ran into when I tried Halloy, but things like not being able to paste a large message because "it exceeds the single message limit" was a real dealbreaker. I ended up going for Crossover and mIRC

goku12 11mo ago
Please file bug reports or feature requests when you find them, if they haven't been filed already. Don't just leave silently. And not just for halloy, but for all FOSS projects in general. The developers/maintainers can choose what to do with them - but they'll at least be aware of the pain points. That too is a contribution to the projects that we use for free. PS: This assumes that you haven't done so. But even if you did, please leave it as a request to everyone else.

ClawsOnPaws 11mo ago

I'd love to test this, however it seems to not be accessible with screen readers. I assume this is because of the GUI library not supporting accessibility. I found an open issue about this on the Iced GitHub where in 2024 it was mentioned that the version after next should support it, and the last comment was in february of this year (https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552 https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/552) I bookmarked this so hopefully once that effort gets further along I can give it a try! I figured I'd leave this comment so that some folks can see that there are real people even on HN who require these features and that accessibility work is always appreciated. We definitely exist :)

nicoburns 11mo ago
Iced also has a roadmap: https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM https://whimsical.com/roadmap-iced-7vhq6R35Lp3TmYH4WeYwLM Screen reader accessibility is at least on it, although not until the release after next.
- ClawsOnPaws 11mo ago
  Heh, that roadmap is also not accessible to screen readers, at least on FireFox. That's unfortunate. But I understand it's a big undertaking with little reward for most people. I do think there are UI libraries with AccessKit integration, egui I believe? Ah well. I'll check back on it every now and then either way.
  - sudahtigabulan 11mo ago
    > that roadmap is also not accessible to screen readers It also has terrible navigation on mobile, even for sighted users. I gave up after a few seconds of trying to use it.

fullstop 11mo ago

Hey, this looks pretty cool and it is very snappy compared to, say, Konversation. It would be fantastic if there was a way to add AppIndicator support and allow the main window to be closed.

slacktivism123 11mo ago

Thank you. Halloy is a wonderfully configurable replacement for beloved Mac IRC client Textual, whose development has sadly wound down (now officially, as of last month). I hope it continues to grow in popularity while keeping performance and privacy at the core.

patrick4urcloud 11mo ago

wow nice !

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

cassepipe 11mo ago

I love the general design of Halloy and I have submitted it to HN at least two times. Glad to see it on the front page ! Keep up the good work

denvermullets 11mo ago

ive been using halloy for almost a year(?) and i really dig it. you and the contributors should be proud. i dont hang out in #halloy but maybe i should!

nmz 11mo ago

Why is this "modern"?

donio 11mo ago
The extensive IRCv3 support for one thing. chathistory support in particular is a big one for me since we rely on it on my personal server. If you scroll down to the Features section on the linked page that gives a good overview.
- guerby 11mo ago
  Hi, I'm used to save locally chat history of channels I'm listening to. In hexchat GUI client chat history is locally found in a simple text file, one line per message in .config/hexchat/logs/irc.libera.chat/xxx.log However I've found no option to create such a log with halloy, am I missing something in the documentation?
  - guerby 11mo ago
    Found https://github.com/squidowl/halloy/issues/91 https://github.com/squidowl/halloy/issues/91

deadbabe 11mo ago

The fact this is written in rust alone means it will be an instant install for me even though I don’t really use IRC :/

sammnaser 11mo ago

Awesome! Been running an IRC server and looking for a decent native client, the ecosystem seems to have frozen around the first Bush presidency so will definitely be trying this out.

Arch-TK 11mo ago

Is this why a bunch of people joined random Libera channels yesterday wondering why IRC is so great if nobody ever talks?

gompertz 11mo ago

This looks amazing. Based on the animated gif, I cant believe how better IRC looks with the text properly indented and separated from the username. Way less visual load!