Modern web IRC client designed for self-hosting

Website • Docs • Demo

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 v6 or more recent. Yarn package manager is also recommended.
If you want to install with npm, --unsafe-perm is required for a correct install.

Running stable releases using Yarn (recommended)

Run this in a terminal to install (or upgrade) the latest stable release from npm registry:

yarn global add thelounge

If you already have The Lounge installed globally, use the following command to update it:

yarn global upgrade thelounge

When installation is complete, run:

thelounge start

For more information, read the usage documentation or run:

thelounge --help

Running from source

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

git clone https://github.com/thelounge/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 test suite
• Run yarn build if you change or add anything in client/js or client/views
• yarn dev can be used to start The Lounge and watch for any file changes in the client folder