Connecting to IRC with Halloy

Halloy is a new IRC client written in Rust that is fast with good theming. Here is how I set up a connection to an irc channel with Halloy and here is how to config Halloy for Rizon.

After downloading Halloy, I referred to the documentation.

Halloy uses a config.toml file, easily edited in code editor like VSCode. By default this is next to the Halloy installation, for me, in AppData/Roaming on Windows.

Halloy has command bar on the bottom left of the application window, and opening that gives options including "Configuration: Open config directory".

Basic connection to Rizon

In config.toml, Halloy already gives an example setup. For Rizon network, here's another example:

[servers.rizon]
nickname = "YourNicknameHere"
nick_password = "yourPassword"
server = "irc.rizon.net"
channels = ["#chat"]
port = 6697
on_connect = ["/msg NickServ IDENTIFY your_password"]

When Halloy opens, the name of the window will be what is written after the period in [servers.name]. Nickname is for irc, password, if needed, is used for authenticating. The server is Rizon, and the channel list ["#chat", "#example"] is for connecting to the channel after opening Halloy. Port 6697 is for ssl with Rizon.
The on_connect is for specifying irc commands to run on connection. Here I have a message to NickServ asking to identify a username with a password.

Configuring Halloy with IRC Bouncer

Halloy also works with irc bouncers. Here is an example in config.toml file, and because my username on irc bouncer is different from nickname on irc...

[servers.bnc]
nickname = "MyNickName"
username = "MyBouncerUsername"
password = "bouncer_server_password_here"
server = "chat.Yourbouncerserverhere.com"
port = +1234
use_tls = true
on_connect = ["nick MyNickName", "/msg NickServ IDENTIFY myNickServPassword", "/join #example"]

The plus on the port (which should be the port to connect to the irc bouncer) indicates ssl.
After logging on to the irc bouncer server, I use the on_connect command to change to preferred nickname, verify with the Nickname Service, and join the preferred channel.

Themes

To install a theme, download and place the theme file in the themes folder where Halloy is installed.