Irssi

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Setting up a mentions/hilight window for irssi.

If you run irssi in a screen you might miss mentions and it's time consuming to scroll back through logs looking for them.

A better way is to create a mentions or hilight window dedicated to any messages that contain your nickname.

(instructions adopted from here).

Install cras's hilightwin.pl:

mkdir -p ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun
curl -L https://blinkenshell.org/static/files/irssi-scripts/hilightwin.pl > ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun/hilightwin.pl

Setup the hilight window:

/window new split
/window name hilight
/window size 6
/layout save

Load the script:

/script load autorun/hilightwin.pl

away_screen.pl

away_screen.pl is a script for irssi which automatically sets /away when you detach from screen. It can also automatically change your nickname when you detach from screen so you can let others know when you're away. It will also log mentions you've received while detached.

Installation

# download screen_away.pl
curl http://scripts.irssi.org/scripts/screen_away.pl ~/.irssi/scripts

# (optional) autoload it by symlinking to ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun
# you may need to make the autorun directory first
cd ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun && ln -sv ../screen_away.pl .

# restart irssi in a screen

To automatically change your nickname when detached, run the following command from irssi:

/set screen_away_nick YOUR_AWAY_NICKNAME

Other useful scripts

BlinkenShell.org has other great scripts which can be found here Installing these scripts is the same as what was shown with hilightwin.pl

mkdir -p ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun
curl -L https://blinkenshell.org/static/files/irssi-scripts/[SCRIPT-NAME-HERE].pl > ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun/[SCRIPT-NAME-HERE].pl

Then load the script in irssi

/script load autorun/[SCRIPT-NAME-HERE].pl

There are also many scripts which you can copy from in: /usr/share/irssi/scripts

last compiled: 2026-03-19 00:22:00.838912