After a couple of hours researching what’s the best and well organized IRC client for OSX, I found Textual from Codeux guys, it’s an IRC client created specifically for OS X and it was designed with simplicity in mind.

It’s pretty handsome and works flawlessly with my ZNC running on another server. On the channel #Textual on Freenode you can talk with the developers Alex` and milky.

Beautiful Interface

Textual includes two elegantly designed light and dark variants of the user interface to match all tastes. The user interface itself has been refined all the way down to the very last pixel. Everything has a place and a purpose and nothing is in the way to create clutter.

Powerful, yet lightweight

Textual supports very powerful modern technologies such as native IPv6, direct client-to-client file transfers, the latest IRCv3 specifications, client-side certificate authentication, and much, much more in a lightweight, easy to navigate, clutter free environment.

Privacy is valued

Sensitive information such as passwords are maintained within the OS X keychain which is encrypted. Additionally, text based encryption with automatic key-exchange using industry proven standards is available. Furthermore, all source code is publicly available for auditing at any time.

Customizable

Textual provides extensive theming support by leveraging technologies such as HTML 5, CSS 3, and JavaScript. Also included is the ability to create alias commands using scripts written in AppleScript, Ruby, Python, Perl, or PHP. For advanced users, it is possible to write plugins in Swift or Objective-C that have unlimited access to the entire codebase of Textual.

Textual also includes…

• Inline nickname colorization
• Rich array of keyboard shortcuts
• iCloud support for syncing connections and preferences
• Address Book for tracking when friends are online & offline
• Powerful, customizable, rule-based ignore matching
• Inline media embedding (Show images inline with chat)
• Auto-Completion for nicknames, commands, and channels
• Growl and native Notification Center support
• Bold, color, italic, and underline text formatting
• Built in support for converting text emoticons to emojis
• Powerful ZNC integration for power users
• Many community created add-ons & styles
• Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)
• SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxy support (with or without SSL)
• Support for sending self-signed certificates for authentication
• Support for validating and specifying trust for untrusted certificates

Licensing

Textual is paid if you want to buy the latest stable release with support and feature suggestions, and free if you want to download and compile yourself. Open-source is a very handy tool in this case because you can see that no passwords or personal data are “calling home”.

They also have an awesome Wiki if you need any help. It can be purchased from the OSX App Store or you can download the Trial Version.