luir: a terminal client for Lurker

luir is a terminal client for Lurker, the always-on IRC client that keeps your connections up while you are away. The name is what it is: a Lurker UI, in Rust.

It speaks the Lurker client protocol over a WebSocket, so the server keeps track of what you have read, your drafts follow you between devices, and a dropped connection picks up from the last message it saw.

Screenshots

luir's main view: a networks sidebar, the #chat channel with its topic, a member list, and the status bar — The main view: networks, favourites and friends down the left, the channel in the middle, and who is in it on the right. The status bar carries the lag and send-rate charts.

The theme picker open over a busy channel, listing schemes with colour swatches — `alt+t`: pick a colour scheme, previewed live on your own channels.

The emoticon picker filtered by a search, listing emoticons with their names — `alt+e`: the emoticon picker, searching names and keywords as you type.

The key reference overlay listing every key binding and what it does — `F1`: every key, with your own bindings applied.

The client log at start-up, with the pixel-art luir banner and version details — Starting up: the banner, the version, and the connection coming up.

The /help output listing commands and aliases in the client log — `/help`: every command and alias in force.

Each one links to its full size.

Get it

The current release is 0.4.0, from 2026-09-18, with prebuilt binaries for Linux and Windows.

What it does

Server-side read state, resume on reconnect, backlog paging, synced drafts, typing notices and nicklists, all over the Lurker client protocol.
Sign-in by approving luir in your browser, even over SSH, so it never handles your password.
Ninety-eight colour schemes, previewed live on your own channels.
ANSI-art start-up banners, drawn in your theme's colours, with room for your own.
A modern layout, or a classic one in the ircII and BitchX tradition.
Favourites and friends, kept on the server with the web UI's.
A mentions buffer gathering every message that highlights you, from every network, with the highlight rules managed from inside luir.
Lag and send-rate charts, small in the status bar or full size on F7.
Networks added, edited and deleted without leaving the client.
An emoticon picker with over three hundred emoticons, aliases, and keys you can rebind.
A Lua config, one annotated file per concern.

News

2026-09-18: luir 0.4.0 is out, for Linux and Windows. Downloads.

2026-09-13: luir 0.3.1 is out, for Linux and Windows. Downloads.

2026-09-12: luir 0.3.0 is out, for Linux and Windows. Downloads.

2026-09-10: luir 0.2.0 is out, for Linux and Windows. Downloads.

2026-09-09: luir 0.1.0 is out, for Linux and Windows. Downloads.

Screenshots

Get it

What it does

Links

News