Lurker

A delightful, always-on IRC bouncer and client with a retro aesthetic and modern conveniences.

Lurker for iOS: the buffer list, a channel conversation, bookmarks, and message search. — iPhone

Lurker for Android: the buffer list, two channel conversations with replies and reactions, and settings. — Android

Features

Always-on and multi-user. Each invited user connects to their own set of IRC networks, and Lurker stays connected when they're away. Admins can restrict which networks users can connect to, and make channel recommendations for newcomers.
Modern conveniences. Peer presence, automatic nick regain, join/part summarization, smart nickname completion, cross-client message drafts, bookmarks, user notes, a powerful highlight & ignore system, reactions, replies, and more.
Full search. Search your message history, filter by nick, channel, or network; and jump to any message instantly, no matter how old it is.
Image uploads. Paste an image into the input box, and Lurker optimizes it, anonymizes it, and uploads it to local storage, S3, Zipline, Chibisafe, or external services like x0.at or catbox.moe.
Customizable UI. The beautiful retro terminal-style PWA interface has 40+ settings to customize it how you want.
Native apps. Lurker has official native apps for iOS and for Android. A self-hosted server can send native push notifications to both through push.lurker.chat, an optional paid relay. There are also third-party clients such as Spooky (Android), and luir (TUI), which bring their own flavor to Lurker.
Built-in bouncer. Don't want to use the Lurker clients? Then don't. Lurker has a best-in-class IRC bouncer built in, complete with soju.im/bouncer-networks, soju.im/FILEHOST support and more, so you can use any IRC client you want, like clircs, Halloy, Goguma, HexDroid and many others.
Inline link & media previews. Links, images, and videos get proper preview images in every client. Implemented as a separate container, to isolate malicious links from your users' data. (Optional, requires lurker-previews container.)
Decoupled IRC connections. Say goodbye to disconnect/reconnect floods when updating Lurker — a secondary container keeps the connections alive while the main service restarts. (Optional, requires lurker-engine container.)

Self-Host Lurker

Lurker is free open source software. Get started by downloading the docker-compose.yml and running the container.

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/amiantos/lurker/main/docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d
open http://localhost:8015/

Self-hosting guide Source on GitHub

Want native push notifications for your users? push.lurker.chat is a $20/year relay that lets a self-hosted instance send push notifications to the official iOS and Android apps. One subscription covers all your users.

Hosted Lurker

Sign up for an account on Lurker.Chat, managed by the same team that builds Lurker. Already have an account? Sign in.

Subscribe for $5/month

Connect to any IRC network, upload images and more to the Lurker CDN, and your connections are always maintained.

Try it free

Connects only to the Lurker Community IRC server. No file uploads. Connections pause after two weeks of idle time.

Try it free

Note: DCC and the built-in bouncer are not currently available on Lurker.Chat.

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