Guides / Messages & media

Messages & media

Send text, reactions, images, videos, and links. Everything stays compact and readable, in the app and in any IRC client.

Sending a message

Type in the composer at the bottom and press Enter to send. Press Shift + Enter for a new line. Inside an open code fence, Enter adds a line and Cmd/Ctrl + Enter sends. Sending closes an unfinished fence for you. The composer always shows which room you're writing to.

Saving, queued, and sending labels use muted text with three moving dots. Queued means the message is waiting to send, not that it failed. Reduced motion keeps the dots still.

Press Alt + ↑ or Alt + ↓ in the composer to move through messages you've recently sent.

On desktop, Cmd + K (Ctrl + K on Windows and Linux) opens a palette that jumps to any channel, thread, or person, opens Settings, Channels, Agents, or IRC, and runs slash commands when you type a leading /.

Starting a direct message

Open New DM, type at least two characters to search by name or nick, and choose a person to open the conversation immediately. Choosing a Contact does the same. Type or paste an email in the same field to show an invitation confirmation, then choose Send invite. Typing an email never sends an invitation. After a successful send, the dialog shows confirmation instead of the form; choose Done or Invite someone else. Slirc creates the private pair in the background while you type. The opened conversation is keyed to that person's account, so your draft is saved and anything you send waits locally, then goes out once the server authorizes the conversation. If starting it fails, your text stays in the conversation and Try again retries the same pair instead of creating a second one. Photos wait until the conversation is ready.

Typing

While someone else types, their avatar appears above the composer with three dots. Only people in the current conversation show. Typing is live only: it is never saved with message history, and replaying older messages never shows it. Your own typing travels on the same IRC connection and clears when you send, pause, or leave the conversation.

Formatting

Slirc supports a small, safe Markdown subset. Formatting previews in the composer and stays readable as plain text in IRC clients.

Select text and press Cmd/Ctrl + B for bold, Cmd/Ctrl + I for italic, or Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + C for inline code. With no selection, shortcut wraps the word at the caret. Paste an HTTP(S) URL over selected text to make a link. Click a rendered link for Go to or Edit; Edit selects its text in the composer so pasting a replacement URL keeps its label.

Emoji

Type :clap: or :claps: for 👏. After two characters, such as :cl, the composer suggests emoji. Use the arrow keys and Enter or Tab to choose; Escape closes the picker without sending.

Standard emoji are sent as Unicode, so IRC clients can display them too. Existing custom emoji appear as images in Slirc and keep their :shortcode: on IRC. Code and URLs stay unchanged; unknown shortcodes stay as text.

Reactions

Hover or focus a message and click the smile button to open the reaction picker. On a phone, touch and hold the message instead; quick reactions sit at the top of the sheet that opens. For any other emoji, choose Add reaction (the smile with a plus) after the quick reactions, type a name such as tada, and press Enter or tap a result. Pick an emoji to stamp the message; tap the stamp again to remove it. Hover or keyboard-focus a stamp to see who added it. Everyone in Slirc sees reactions, and IRC clients with reaction support, such as Halloy, render the same stamps.

Custom emoji added to your Slirc show up in message and reaction search. They travel over IRC as readable shortcodes such as :party_parrot:.

Editing and deleting

Open a message's menu (⋮) to edit it, reply in a thread, set a reminder with Remind me, or delete it. On a phone, touch and hold a message to get the same actions in a sheet; tap outside it to close. Edited messages show (edited). You can edit or delete your own messages.

Drafts save locally as you type. Switch conversations to find unsent text under Drafts in navigation; select one to continue at its end, or delete it there. Sending clears its entry.

Images and videos

Photos are the supported upload. Use the attach button to choose one JPEG, PNG, or WebP under 12 MB. The server resizes it to at most 1600 pixels on the longest edge and saves it as WebP, preserving transparency and removing embedded metadata. One photo per message. Animated GIFs and video files are not uploaded: send a GIF with /giphy. The GIF shows inline, with its bracketed [Giphy: …] label as the link; the original URL stays in the message for IRC clients.

Collapse a message's image and embed previews to icons with the toggle on any preview. Slirc remembers collapsed messages per account in this browser.

Private uploads require current conversation membership, including the parent conversation for thread media. Public-room media and custom emoji are public. See media access and its limits. Authorized video viewers can seek through the file.

Open an image to zoom. Escape restores the normal view before closing it; reactions stay on the message, not in the lightbox.

Links and previews

Paste a link and Slirc shows a preview with the page's title, description, and image when available. A link that points straight at an image, such as a Pexels photo, shows the picture inline instead of a card; click it to open the lightbox. When validated image metadata provides dimensions, Slirc reserves the picture's space before it loads. Pages that publish oEmbed (YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, SoundCloud, Bluesky, TikTok, Loom, CodePen, Figma, Apple Music, Bandcamp, Twitch, Mastodon and PeerTube instances) show a thumbnail with a play button; pressing it opens the player in a sandboxed frame.

Privacy: preview images load through the Slirc server, and nothing is fetched from the provider by your browser until you press play. YouTube uses the no-cookie host, Vimeo gets do-not-track. Sites that need their own scripts (X, Instagram, Facebook) stay plain link cards.

Previews are per device. Dismiss one with the × and Slirc remembers.

A link to a message in this Slirc shows as a short label, such as View in #general, View in DM with sam or View in thread, and opens that message in place.

In public rooms, you see the preview a member already loaded for that link, plus video thumbnails. The server does not fetch remote pages on request. Photos and videos pasted in those rooms stay visible to members too; private media requires current conversation membership.

Commands

/help inside the app lists everything. The useful ones:

Next

Turn one message into a focused conversation with threads, or tune when you get pinged in notifications.