Modern web IRC client designed for self-hosting

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🔐 FiSH Blowfish Fork

This is a fork of The Lounge with integrated FiSH Blowfish encryption support.

This enhanced version adds IRC message encryption capabilities using the FiSH (Blowfish) encryption protocol, compatible with popular IRC clients like HexChat, mIRC, and others.

FiSH Features

• Per-channel encryption - Set individual encryption keys for each channel or query
• Global encryption key - Apply a default key across all channels
• Automatic encryption/decryption - Seamlessly encrypts outgoing and decrypts incoming messages
• mIRC compatibility - Full compatibility with standard FiSH implementations
• Easy key management - Simple /blow commands for setting and clearing keys

Usage

/blow <key>          # Set encryption key for current channel
/blow off            # Disable encryption for current channel
/blow                # Show current encryption status

Keys can also be configured via the network settings in the web interface.

Overview

• Modern features brought to IRC. Push notifications, link previews, new message markers, and more bring IRC to the 21st century.
• Always connected. Remains connected to IRC servers while you are offline.
• Cross platform. It doesn't matter what OS you use, it just works wherever Node.js runs.
• Responsive interface. The client works smoothly on every desktop, smartphone and tablet.
• Synchronized experience. Always resume where you left off no matter what device.

To learn more about configuration, usage and features of The Lounge, take a look at the website.

The Lounge is the official and community-managed fork of Shout, by Mattias Erming.

Installation and usage

The Lounge requires Node.js v24.11.1 or newer (Node.js v24 LTS or v25+ recommended). The Yarn package manager v4.11.0+ is also recommended. If you want to install with npm, --unsafe-perm is required for a correct install.

Running stable releases

Please refer to the install and upgrade documentation on our website for all available installation methods.

Running from source

The following commands install and run the development version of The Lounge:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/thelounge.git
cd thelounge
yarn install
NODE_ENV=production yarn build
yarn start

When installed like this, thelounge executable is not created. Use node index <command> to run commands.

⚠️ While it is the most recent codebase, this is not production-ready! Run at your own risk. It is also not recommended to run this as root.

Development setup

Simply follow the instructions to run The Lounge from source above, on your own fork.

Before submitting any change, make sure to:

• Read the Contributing instructions
• Run yarn test to execute linters and the test suite
  • Run yarn format:prettier if linting fails
• Run yarn build:client if you change or add anything in client/js or client/components
  • The built files will be output to public/ by webpack
• Run yarn build:server if you change anything in server/
  • The built files will be output to dist/ by tsc
• yarn dev can be used to start The Lounge with hot module reloading

To ensure that you don't commit files that fail the linting, you can install a pre-commit git hook. Execute yarn githooks-install to do so.