I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, but that could be because I’m not sure what it is.

I think my first IRC client for OSX was Colloquy. At some point Adium gained IRC-ability, and so I switched to that, using it for IRC and chat both. Then I switched again, to Textual for IRC and a short while later, iChat for chat.

I really like Textual, but it has a few bugs. Since I, like most people, don’t appreciate what I have (a really nice IRC client) as much as I’m bothered by what I don’t (a perfect IRC client), I’m on the hunt again.

I’ve searched the interwebs for a popular IRC client for OSX, and what I’ve found is that there really doesn’t seem to be a clear leader. Or even multiple clear leaders. Except for maybe Colloquy. Now I don’t remember: why did I abandon Colloquy?

There are other clients, of course, though most of them aren’t in active development. I found LimeChat, which I’ll try. I found Xirc, which hasn’t been updated in more than five years. I found Snak, which seems more recent. X-Chat Aqua is less than a year out of date, which seems promising. Conversation is also on my list to check out. If I want to spend some real money, there’s Linkinus. I live in IRC all day, so while $30 is steepish, it’s not completely unreasonable.

Ultimately, though, Colloquy seems to be the most popular. I wish I could remember why I abandoned it! Perhaps I was just lured in by the idea of combining my IRC and IM windows. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Update: Foolishly, I didn’t think to check the Mac App Store. This is especially foolish given that I’m running Textual, which I purchased from there. When I did check, I discovered links to Textual for $5, Mango IRC for $2, Linkinus for only $10, and LimeChat for free. That’s one additional client, and better links and prices for three others.