7 ms·

I really hate Slack but the killer feature nobody in irc world is solving is mobile connectivity. If get logged out every time I lock my phone then I have to ke

I really hate Slack but the killer feature nobody in irc world is solving is mobile connectivity. If get logged out every time I lock my phone then I have to keep dealing with Slack.

Darmody 4y ago
I don't think that's going to change. It's like that by design and I don't think IRC devs are willing to change it. So you'd have to use a server that's connected to the IRC server 24/7 and connect from your phone to that server.
- DrJokepu 4y ago
  Isn't that what BNC is?
  - johnisgood 4y ago
    It is.
- brabel 4y ago
  Why is it designed that way? Just to avoid the server having to keep data while you're offline? Or there's a grander motivation?
  - vegai_ 4y ago
    IRC is a message-passing service, not a log synchronization service -- like many of the more modern ones are. You might say that that is one of its architectural strengths, unless, of course, you want to see old messages that were passed when you were offline. In which case you'll need to hack something like bouncers up, which works in practice really well. Or https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory# https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory# this might change it.
  - okasaki 4y ago
    IRC doesn't have accounts, you just connect, specify a nickname and it's yours unless it is used by another connected user. So not really possible to track users.
    - brabel 4y ago
      I've been using https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/ which allows "claiming" Nicks with a registered email account... I suppose it would be possible to "buffer" messages? I see some IRCs even keep a mailing-list-like record of all messages posted on a channel... so I don't see how it's not possible.
      - usrn 4y ago
        Logging and nick registration are both extra services that run ontop of IRC. At one point I extended an IRC server where you could send a list of regex filters. When messages where sent to channels you had joined that matched the filters it would send you push notifications. I think that combined with logging is really all people want on mobile. Unfortunately someone has to actually run the push server and that 1) Requires more work than volunteers are willing to do 2) Can only be done by people holding the certificates used to publish the app. I've personally just given up on popular mobile OSes. They're a disaster in nearly every way.
      - Darmody 4y ago
        If the nick bot is down, there's no registration. It's just a bot that runs on IRC just like the bots I made when I was using it.
- onion90 4y ago
  The Ergo IRCd has an built in "Always-on" feature which allows you to stay online without an additional server.
- one_more_q 4y ago
  That’s what a bouncer is. And I already used it to solve this problem 20 years ago. The main point back then was of course that nobody steals your username.
  - tamrix 4y ago
    And don't forget idling in your friends chat rooms so it appears higher on the list and randos would join.
sleepydog 4y ago
I use chat.sr.ht, which is a hosted instance of the ircv3 bouncer soju.im. This keeps me logged in without requiring my phone to be always connected.
darrenf 4y ago
irccloud.com has worked wonderfully for me, for many years now.
- cpach 4y ago
  Irccloud is really nice. Best IRC client I’ve ever used.
vegai_ 4y ago
The chathistory extension[0] might take care of that problem. If IRC lives that long. [0] https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory
johnisgood 4y ago
That is a non-issue. That is what bouncers are for. It has been around for over 20 years or something. Personally I run irssi inside screen on a server and I ssh into it using my phone.
welterde 4y ago
This issue has been solved by the ergo in that it integrates the bouncer functionality into the IRC server. So from everyone elses perspective you never get disconnected and combined with support for the chathistory extension (which your mobile IRC client has to support) you won't miss things happening in between either. But that being said, the mobile phone essentially killing all open tcp connections is not really that great of a thing. IRC is not the only protocol that suffers here, but also IMAP IDLE push notifications suffer here.
rob74 4y ago
I don't hate Slack per se, but I hate their bloated Electron client. Fortunately some weeks ago their Linux client stopped working on my machine (it had been warning me for some time that my OS version is "too old" - interestingly other Electron apps and Chrome itself are just fine with that). Since then I discovered that the web version works just as well and is less resource-intensive...
- hatch_q 4y ago
  Electron hate is in most cases unsubstantiated, esp. when compared to their web counterparts. Just checked discord - electron app consumes half the memory firefox does with only discord open.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- corobo 4y ago
  Yeah I use Slack in a pinned browser tab too. I figure if the interface is the same I might as well wrap it with the browser I have open 90% of my day than some separate Electron app I'll forget to open.
theshrike79 4y ago
The biggest issue with mobile IRC that it needs a constant open TCP connection to the server. You need to have a client or a proxy client running somewhere 24/7. You can self-host it (bouncer) or you can pay someone else to do it (IRCCloud). But it's still a protocol level issue. IRCv3 might be doing something about it, but I'm not holding my breath.
- emersion 4y ago
  Working on it: https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/471 https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/471
unhammer 4y ago
Put https://weechat.org/ https://weechat.org/ on your vpn (or a raspberry pi under your couch or whatever) and install one of the weechat apps.
charcircuit 4y ago
Another killer feature IRC is missing is being able to react with a party parrot or other custom emoji.
- pmlnr 4y ago
  This is sarcasm, right?
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    No. I think custom emoji and being able to use them as reactions are essential parts of what a chat app should have.
    - usrn 4y ago
      Reactions are cancer. If you have something to say send a message. EDIT: I can't reply to your other message but having to deal with people editing their messages is awful in any real time chat. Once you send a message it's sent and if you want to make changes send a new message. I once had someone gaslight me using message editing in Slack and never ever want to deal with that again.
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        I want to reach with an emoji. Sure I could reply with a custom emoji, but reactions just is a better way to do it without adding extra noise to the conversation.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - cbm-vic-20 4y ago
        :(
    - pmlnr 4y ago
      chat chăt intransitive verb 1) To converse in an easy, familiar manner; talk lightly and casually. 2) To participate in a synchronous exchange of remarks with one or more people over a computer network. No, reactions are not essential part of chat apps.
pmlnr 4y ago
It's the other way around: the phone systems actively block background connections.
- usrn 4y ago
  I've experimented with this on the pinephone. You can often just get away with leaving TCP connections open while the device is locked (on mine "locked" means something like Android where the device suspends and periodically wakes up so apps can maintain their sockets) as long as you wake up before the keep alive message for the protocol you're using leaving sockets open is fine. That's effectively what the push notification receiver in the OS is doing anyway (although it does something special with the hardware so the incoming packets actually wake up the device for lower latency.) There's no reason not to allow this for open source apps (commercial ones would obviously abuse it and you would have battery life issues.) Unfortunately it doesn't matter what makes sense on mobile, you're not allowed to tinker with the OS in any way. EDIT: That's great! I did not know about it. You could probably get around the issue of teaching clients to use it by modifying the BSD socket library to open sockets that way after checking an environment variable. I might mess around with that later.
  - Arnavion 4y ago
    For the Pinephone, the Quectel firmware supports AT commands for creating a TCP connection through the modem, after which the modem sends wakeups on the bus when it receives data on that socket. So that can be used to implement push notifications without any lag from having to periodically wake up to check. The problem is that: a) ... this requires teaching ModemManager about this API since MM is the only thing that talks to the modem. b) ... this requires teaching clients to talk to MM for a TCP connection, likely using some new dbus-based API to match MM's existing API, instead of just socket() + connect() + read() + write(). So existing TCP-socket using programs will not work without modification. (LD_PRELOAD trickery can work, though ideally only sockets used for push notifications would be routed through MM and the rest use socket(), which can be hard for an LD_PRELOAD'd library to do.) c) ... one should really be running the OSS firmware instead of Quectel's, and the OSS firmware does not implement those commands. This was discussed a few months ago in #pinephone. AFAIK no one is working on it.
sph 4y ago
Would QUIC with its connection migration feature help here?
znpy 4y ago
You can run thelounge somewhere and use thst as web interface. Android and iOS allows you to iconify a website, so that would feel like a native app. https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/
emersion 4y ago
Shameless plug: someone is trying to solve these issues: https://sr.ht/~emersion/goguma/ https://sr.ht/~emersion/goguma/ It uses IRCv3 chathistory + a proposed extension for push notifications.
- usrn 4y ago
  Who's going to babysit the iOS push server? Colloquy already has this and I modified an IRC server to support it but the push server is down so often it's not usable. I'd run the push server myself but Apple requires that I pay them $100/year, buy a macintosh, and convince them my version of the app is substantially different all for the privilege of maintaining a service required to support their miserable OS. EDIT: ah, of course it's Android only. EDIT2: They absolutely are Apple problems. Unfortunately Apple has convinced their users that they are IRC problems and the practical reality is that Apple users will not use IRC unless they're fixed which for me means setting up eg MMS bridges with cheogram which is a major pain. Thankfully we're getting web push on iOS next year and that will (hopefully) make all these problems effectively go away.
  - zepolen 4y ago
    These sound like Apple problems not IRC problems.
  - modinfo 4y ago
    You can always give the possibility that the user enters his API key to Pushover and by pushover you can receive push notifications, I have already written many programs that work with Pushover, one works to this day, every 6 hours I get the current price of bitcoin back with a difference whether the price has decreased or increased. It's really convenient, I don't even have to pull out my phone because notifications come straight to my Apple Watch.
    - there 4y ago
      Just FYI, Pushover has a Glances API so you can push data like that directly to an Apple Watch complication. https://pushover.net/api/glances https://pushover.net/api/glances
Fnoord 4y ago
That issue was solved ages ago with screen or bouncers. One could also push notifications via e.g. Gotify.
tenebrisalietum 4y ago
Thelounge solves it nicely. Run Thelounge somewhere and it provides a great interface for your phone with chat history storage and other conveniences.
corobo 4y ago
Yup, lack of roaming support was what killed IRC for me. I see that IRCv3 tries to address this but it's about 20 years too late and 10 years since I last used IRC. Props to them for giving it a go but I feel it'd take something massive for people to switch back to IRC at this point
Agamus 4y ago
Today I learned that mobile connectivity issues are another thing I love about IRC.
nly 4y ago
Tradional way to deal with this is a bouncer on a VPS somewhere
giancarlostoro 4y ago
Connection bouncer is what you're yearning for. If that doesn't interest you, then try IRCCloud, which is fantastic on mobile.

I really hate Slack but the killer feature nobody in irc world is solving is mobile connectivity. If get logged out every time I lock my phone then I have to keep dealing with Slack.

Darmody 4y ago

I don't think that's going to change. It's like that by design and I don't think IRC devs are willing to change it. So you'd have to use a server that's connected to the IRC server 24/7 and connect from your phone to that server.

DrJokepu 4y ago
Isn't that what BNC is?
- johnisgood 4y ago
  It is.
brabel 4y ago
Why is it designed that way? Just to avoid the server having to keep data while you're offline? Or there's a grander motivation?
- vegai_ 4y ago
  IRC is a message-passing service, not a log synchronization service -- like many of the more modern ones are. You might say that that is one of its architectural strengths, unless, of course, you want to see old messages that were passed when you were offline. In which case you'll need to hack something like bouncers up, which works in practice really well. Or https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory# https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory# this might change it.
- okasaki 4y ago
  IRC doesn't have accounts, you just connect, specify a nickname and it's yours unless it is used by another connected user. So not really possible to track users.
  - brabel 4y ago
    I've been using https://libera.chat/ https://libera.chat/ which allows "claiming" Nicks with a registered email account... I suppose it would be possible to "buffer" messages? I see some IRCs even keep a mailing-list-like record of all messages posted on a channel... so I don't see how it's not possible.
    - usrn 4y ago
      Logging and nick registration are both extra services that run ontop of IRC. At one point I extended an IRC server where you could send a list of regex filters. When messages where sent to channels you had joined that matched the filters it would send you push notifications. I think that combined with logging is really all people want on mobile. Unfortunately someone has to actually run the push server and that 1) Requires more work than volunteers are willing to do 2) Can only be done by people holding the certificates used to publish the app. I've personally just given up on popular mobile OSes. They're a disaster in nearly every way.
    - Darmody 4y ago
      If the nick bot is down, there's no registration. It's just a bot that runs on IRC just like the bots I made when I was using it.
onion90 4y ago
The Ergo IRCd has an built in "Always-on" feature which allows you to stay online without an additional server.
one_more_q 4y ago
That’s what a bouncer is. And I already used it to solve this problem 20 years ago. The main point back then was of course that nobody steals your username.
- tamrix 4y ago
  And don't forget idling in your friends chat rooms so it appears higher on the list and randos would join.

sleepydog 4y ago

I use chat.sr.ht, which is a hosted instance of the ircv3 bouncer soju.im. This keeps me logged in without requiring my phone to be always connected.

darrenf 4y ago

irccloud.com has worked wonderfully for me, for many years now.

cpach 4y ago
Irccloud is really nice. Best IRC client I’ve ever used.

vegai_ 4y ago

The chathistory extension[0] might take care of that problem. If IRC lives that long. [0] https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory https://ircv3.net/specs/extensions/chathistory

johnisgood 4y ago

That is a non-issue. That is what bouncers are for. It has been around for over 20 years or something. Personally I run irssi inside screen on a server and I ssh into it using my phone.

welterde 4y ago

This issue has been solved by the ergo in that it integrates the bouncer functionality into the IRC server. So from everyone elses perspective you never get disconnected and combined with support for the chathistory extension (which your mobile IRC client has to support) you won't miss things happening in between either. But that being said, the mobile phone essentially killing all open tcp connections is not really that great of a thing. IRC is not the only protocol that suffers here, but also IMAP IDLE push notifications suffer here.

rob74 4y ago

I don't hate Slack per se, but I hate their bloated Electron client. Fortunately some weeks ago their Linux client stopped working on my machine (it had been warning me for some time that my OS version is "too old" - interestingly other Electron apps and Chrome itself are just fine with that). Since then I discovered that the web version works just as well and is less resource-intensive...

hatch_q 4y ago
Electron hate is in most cases unsubstantiated, esp. when compared to their web counterparts. Just checked discord - electron app consumes half the memory firefox does with only discord open.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
corobo 4y ago
Yeah I use Slack in a pinned browser tab too. I figure if the interface is the same I might as well wrap it with the browser I have open 90% of my day than some separate Electron app I'll forget to open.

theshrike79 4y ago

The biggest issue with mobile IRC that it needs a constant open TCP connection to the server. You need to have a client or a proxy client running somewhere 24/7. You can self-host it (bouncer) or you can pay someone else to do it (IRCCloud). But it's still a protocol level issue. IRCv3 might be doing something about it, but I'm not holding my breath.

emersion 4y ago
Working on it: https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/471 https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/pull/471

unhammer 4y ago

Put https://weechat.org/ https://weechat.org/ on your vpn (or a raspberry pi under your couch or whatever) and install one of the weechat apps.

charcircuit 4y ago

Another killer feature IRC is missing is being able to react with a party parrot or other custom emoji.

pmlnr 4y ago
This is sarcasm, right?
- charcircuit 4y ago
  No. I think custom emoji and being able to use them as reactions are essential parts of what a chat app should have.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Reactions are cancer. If you have something to say send a message. EDIT: I can't reply to your other message but having to deal with people editing their messages is awful in any real time chat. Once you send a message it's sent and if you want to make changes send a new message. I once had someone gaslight me using message editing in Slack and never ever want to deal with that again.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      I want to reach with an emoji. Sure I could reply with a custom emoji, but reactions just is a better way to do it without adding extra noise to the conversation.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - cbm-vic-20 4y ago
      :(
  - pmlnr 4y ago
    chat chăt intransitive verb 1) To converse in an easy, familiar manner; talk lightly and casually. 2) To participate in a synchronous exchange of remarks with one or more people over a computer network. No, reactions are not essential part of chat apps.

pmlnr 4y ago

It's the other way around: the phone systems actively block background connections.

usrn 4y ago
I've experimented with this on the pinephone. You can often just get away with leaving TCP connections open while the device is locked (on mine "locked" means something like Android where the device suspends and periodically wakes up so apps can maintain their sockets) as long as you wake up before the keep alive message for the protocol you're using leaving sockets open is fine. That's effectively what the push notification receiver in the OS is doing anyway (although it does something special with the hardware so the incoming packets actually wake up the device for lower latency.) There's no reason not to allow this for open source apps (commercial ones would obviously abuse it and you would have battery life issues.) Unfortunately it doesn't matter what makes sense on mobile, you're not allowed to tinker with the OS in any way. EDIT: That's great! I did not know about it. You could probably get around the issue of teaching clients to use it by modifying the BSD socket library to open sockets that way after checking an environment variable. I might mess around with that later.
- Arnavion 4y ago
  For the Pinephone, the Quectel firmware supports AT commands for creating a TCP connection through the modem, after which the modem sends wakeups on the bus when it receives data on that socket. So that can be used to implement push notifications without any lag from having to periodically wake up to check. The problem is that: a) ... this requires teaching ModemManager about this API since MM is the only thing that talks to the modem. b) ... this requires teaching clients to talk to MM for a TCP connection, likely using some new dbus-based API to match MM's existing API, instead of just socket() + connect() + read() + write(). So existing TCP-socket using programs will not work without modification. (LD_PRELOAD trickery can work, though ideally only sockets used for push notifications would be routed through MM and the rest use socket(), which can be hard for an LD_PRELOAD'd library to do.) c) ... one should really be running the OSS firmware instead of Quectel's, and the OSS firmware does not implement those commands. This was discussed a few months ago in #pinephone. AFAIK no one is working on it.

sph 4y ago

Would QUIC with its connection migration feature help here?

znpy 4y ago

You can run thelounge somewhere and use thst as web interface. Android and iOS allows you to iconify a website, so that would feel like a native app. https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/

emersion 4y ago

Shameless plug: someone is trying to solve these issues: https://sr.ht/~emersion/goguma/ https://sr.ht/~emersion/goguma/ It uses IRCv3 chathistory + a proposed extension for push notifications.

usrn 4y ago
Who's going to babysit the iOS push server? Colloquy already has this and I modified an IRC server to support it but the push server is down so often it's not usable. I'd run the push server myself but Apple requires that I pay them $100/year, buy a macintosh, and convince them my version of the app is substantially different all for the privilege of maintaining a service required to support their miserable OS. EDIT: ah, of course it's Android only. EDIT2: They absolutely are Apple problems. Unfortunately Apple has convinced their users that they are IRC problems and the practical reality is that Apple users will not use IRC unless they're fixed which for me means setting up eg MMS bridges with cheogram which is a major pain. Thankfully we're getting web push on iOS next year and that will (hopefully) make all these problems effectively go away.
- zepolen 4y ago
  These sound like Apple problems not IRC problems.
- modinfo 4y ago
  You can always give the possibility that the user enters his API key to Pushover and by pushover you can receive push notifications, I have already written many programs that work with Pushover, one works to this day, every 6 hours I get the current price of bitcoin back with a difference whether the price has decreased or increased. It's really convenient, I don't even have to pull out my phone because notifications come straight to my Apple Watch.
  - there 4y ago
    Just FYI, Pushover has a Glances API so you can push data like that directly to an Apple Watch complication. https://pushover.net/api/glances https://pushover.net/api/glances

Fnoord 4y ago

That issue was solved ages ago with screen or bouncers. One could also push notifications via e.g. Gotify.

tenebrisalietum 4y ago

Thelounge solves it nicely. Run Thelounge somewhere and it provides a great interface for your phone with chat history storage and other conveniences.

corobo 4y ago

Yup, lack of roaming support was what killed IRC for me. I see that IRCv3 tries to address this but it's about 20 years too late and 10 years since I last used IRC. Props to them for giving it a go but I feel it'd take something massive for people to switch back to IRC at this point

Agamus 4y ago

Today I learned that mobile connectivity issues are another thing I love about IRC.

nly 4y ago

Tradional way to deal with this is a bouncer on a VPS somewhere

giancarlostoro 4y ago

Connection bouncer is what you're yearning for. If that doesn't interest you, then try IRCCloud, which is fantastic on mobile.