HexChat is a discontinued Internet Relay Chat client and is a fork of XChat. It has a choice of a tabbed document interface or tree interface, support for multiple servers, and numerous configuration options. Both command-line and graphical versions are available. The client runs on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, and many Linux distributions include packages in their repositories.

History

The XChat-WDK (XChat Windows Driver Kit) project started in 2010 and was originally Windows-only. The project's original goal was to merge itself with XChat, but evolved from just fixing Windows bugs to adding new features. It started to make sense to support more platforms than Windows. On July 6, 2012, XChat-WDK officially changed its name to HexChat. The project was discontinued in early 2024, citing lack of maintainer availability.