finch(1)

💖 finch(1) 💖

bestie, welcome to the manual page for finch(1) — straight out of the General Commands Manual. Pull up a chair, we're going through every single line together. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

Finch — A Pimpin' Penguin console frontend to libpurple. Instant Messaging client. 🐧👑

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

finch [options]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So finch is a console-based modular messaging client built on top of libpurple, and the way it just… connects to XMPP, IRC, SILC, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, Zephyr, Gadu-Gadu, and QQ all at once?? Iconic. Truly main character energy. 💅

It's got a ton of the features you'd find in other clients, plus a bunch of unique ones that are just, like, its whole thing. ✨

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

These are all provided by finch using the standard GNU command line syntax, no cap:

• -c, --config=DIR — use DIR as the directory for config files instead of ~/.purple. 📁
• -d, --debug — print debugging messages to stderr and start with the Debug window. The messages shown in the Debug window are the same as the ones printed in stderr. 🔍
• -h, --help — print this help and exit. 🫶
• -n, --nologin — don't automatically login when finch starts. Sets all accounts to Offline. 😴
• -v, --version — display the version information window. ⭐

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🎀 GNT Shortcuts 🎀

You can use the following shortcuts (peep the "Widget Actions" section for a more complete list, bestie):

• Alt + a — bring up a list of available actions. You can use this list to access the accounts window, plugins window, preference window etc. 👑
• Alt + n — go to the next window.
• Alt + p — go to the previous window.
• Alt + w — show the list of windows. You can select and jump to any window from the list. 🪟
• Alt + c — close the current window.
• Alt + q — quit.
• Alt + m — start moving a window. Press the cursor keys to move the window. When you are done, press Enter or Escape. 🕹️
• Alt + r — start resizing a window. Press the cursor keys to resize the window. When you are done, press Enter or Escape. 📐
• Alt + D — dump the contents of the screen in HTML format.
• Alt + . — move the position of the current window in the window list one place to the right.
• Alt + , — move the position of the current window in the window list one place to the left.
• Alt + l — refresh the windows. This is useful after resizing the terminal window. 🔄
• Alt + 1 2 ... 0 — jump to the 1st, 2nd ... 10th window.
• Alt + Tab — jump to the next URGENT (highlighted) window.
• Alt + Shift + Tab — jump to the previous URGENT (highlighted) window.
• Ctrl + o or F10 — bring up the menu (if there is one) for a window.
• F11 or Ctrl + x — popup the context menu (if there is one) for the selected widget.
• Alt + / — show a list of available key-bindings for the current widget in focus.
• Alt + > — switch to the next workspace
• Alt + < — switch to the previous workspace
• Alt + t — tag (or untag) the current window
• Alt + T — attached all the tagged windows to the current workspace
• Alt + s — show the workspace list
• F9 — create a new workspace and switch to it

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🌈 FILES 🌈

~/.gntrc: configuration file for gnt applications.

A sample file looks like:

[Finch]
color-available = green; black
color-away = blue; black
color-idle = gray; black
color-offline = red; black
color-message-sent = cyan; default
color-message-received = red; default
color-message-highlight = black; green
color-message-action = yellow; default
color-timestamp = blue; default
#See below for details on color

[general]
shadow = 0
# There is experimental mouse support
mouse = 1
# To use some custom window-manager
wm = /usr/local/lib/gnt/s.so
# There's also a custom window manager called irssi.so
# Remember window-positions based on the titles (on by default)
remember_position = 1
# Use borderless one-line high buttons
small-button = true

# Workspaces are created simply by adding Workspace-X groups as follows:
[Workspace-1]
name = blist
# window-names specifies that windows with these semi-colon separated names are placed into this workspace
window-names = buddylist;debug-window

[Workspace-2]
name = IM
window-names = conversation-window
# window-titles specifies that windows with these semi-colon separated titles are placed into this workspace. These are matched as substrings. Window titles take precedence over names.
window-titles = Preferences;Pounce

[colors]
# The RGB values range in [0, 1000]
black = 0; 0; 0
red = 1000; 0; 0
green = 0; 1000; 0
blue = 250; 250; 700
white = 1000; 1000; 1000
gray = 700; 700; 700
darkgray = 256; 256; 256

[colorpairs]
normal = white; black
highlight = white; blue
highlightd = black; gray
shadow = black; darkgray
title = white; blue
titled = white; gray
text = white; blue
disabled = gray; black
urgent = green; black

# Remap some keys for GntEntry
[GntEntry::remap]
# Remap the up-arrow to the left-arrow
^[[A = ^[[D
# Remap the down-arrow to the right-arrow
^[[B = ^[[C
# Remap 'a' to 'bcd'
a = bcd
# Completely ignore the key 'q'
q =
# But the following will NOT work
#abc = bcd

# Hitting 'space' will activate a button
[GntButton::remap]
\  = \r

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🧚 Widget Actions 🧚

You can specify key-bindings for specific widgets, bestie. The following entries in ~/.gntrc correspond to the default keybindings for the actions:

[GntBox::binding]
tab = focus-next
right = focus-next
left = focus-prev

[GntComboBox::binding]
down = dropdown
up = dropdown

[GntEntry::binding]
c-a = cursor-home
home = cursor-home
c-e = cursor-end
end = cursor-end
backspace = delete-prev
del = delete-next
c-d = delete-next
c-u = delete-start
c-k = delete-end
c-b = cursor-prev
left = cursor-prev
c-f = cursor-next
right = cursor-next
tab = suggest-show
down = suggest-next
up = suggest-prev
page-down = suggest-next-page
page-up = suggest-prev-page
c-w = delete-prev-word
a-b = cursor-prev-word
a-f = cursor-next-word
a-d = delete-next-word
c-v = clipboard-paste
c-p = history-prev
c-n = history-next
c-r = history-search
c-up = history-prev
c-down = history-next

[GntTree::binding]
up = move-up
down = move-down
c-n = move-down
c-p = move-up
pageup = page-up
pagedown = page-down
backspace = move-parent
home = move-first
end = move-last
# Following is the default binding for the context-menu
menu = context-menu
# The following will let you open the context-menu in the buddylist with c-b
# c-b = context-menu

[GntWidget::binding]
f11 = context-menu
c-x = context-menu

[GntWindow::binding]
c-o = show-menu
f10 = show-menu

The c- corresponds to the Control key. You can also use ctrl- or ctr- or ctl- to indicate a combination. For alt-keys, you can use one of a-, alt-, m- or meta-. You can also use home, end, left, right etc. keys. ⌨️

To unbind a key which has a default binding, you simply bind it to the empty string. For example, to unbind Alt + q from the Quit function, you would use:

[GntWM::binding]
a-q =

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💜 Menus 💜

You can also specify key-bindings to trigger specific menuitems in windows. For example, the following entry in ~/.gntrc will bind Ctrl + t to the 'Send IM...' item in the buddylist:

[buddylist::menu]
c-t = send-im

The following is the list of IDs of the current menuitems in the buddylist:

send-im
join-chat
show-empty-groups
show-offline-buddies
sort-status
sort-alpha
sort-log
add-buddy
add-chat
add-group

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🍓 Mouse Support 🍓

There is experimental mouse support. You can focus windows, activate buttons, select rows in a list, scroll using the wheel-scroll etc. Selecting text in a text-view copies it to the gnt clipboard. 🖱️

Careful, bestie: mouse support is disabled by default, so you need to enable it in ~/.gntrc (see the sample above).

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👑 Window Management 👑

The default window management is very limited. But it is possible to write custom window managers to suit your needs. There is a sample window-manager included (named s.so) which adds a little 'close-button' for the windows, removes the borders from the buddylist and pops up new windows in the middle of the screen, instead of at the upper-left corder. It is provided as a sample simple manager, but it should be possible to write more complex managers, and it's very possible that the window-manager API will need to be enhanced. Look at the sample ~/.gntrc file above to see how to select a window-manager. 🪟✨

It is also possible to rebind the window-manager actions in ~/.gntrc, eg:

[GntWM::binding]
a-n = window-next
a-p = window-prev
a-c = window-close
a-w = window-list
a-d = dump-screen
a-, = shift-left
a-. = shift-right
a-a = action-list
a-m = start-move
a-r = start-resize
a-q = wm-quit
a-l = refresh-screen
a-s = workspace-list
a-t = window-tag
a-T = place-tagged
a-C = toggle-clipboard
a-/ = help-for-widget
a-c-j = window-scroll-down
a-c-k = window-scroll-up
# The following action is still incomplete, and doesn't have a default binding
# switch-window-n
# Other actions: window-next-urgent, window-prev-urgent

# For the sample custom window manager
[GntS::binding]
a-b = toggle-buddylist

# For the irssi window manager
[Irssi::binding]
a-L = move-right
a-H = move-left
a-J = move-down
a-K = move-up

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🫶 Conversation Commands 🫶

There are a few helpful commands in addition to the regular commands. You can use these from any conversation to access other windows. 🔥

• accounts — for the accounts window.
• buddylist — for the buddylist.
• debugwin — for the debug window.
• plugins — for the plugins window.
• prefs — for the preferences window.
• status — for the status window.

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⭐ FAQ ⭐

FAQ for finch is located at

http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Finch

🐛 BUGS 🐛

okay bestie, nobody's perfect and finch knows it 💅 the known bugs are all listed right here:

http://developer.pidgin.im/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&component=finch+%28gnt%2Fncurses%29&order=priority

and before you go sending a bug report, pls pls pls double check that you're running the latest version of finch and libpurple first 🫶 like, actually. so many bugs — major and minor ones — get squashed every single release, so if your version is out of date, the thing that's breaking for you might already be fixed. it's giving "the answer was there the whole time" 😭

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🩹 PATCHES 🩹

if you fix a bug in finch (or honestly just make it better in any way), submit a patch and be the main character you were born to be ✨ here's how:

• use mtn diff > my.diff against the latest version from the Monotone repository
• send it over at http://developer.pidgin.im/simpleticket

and lowkey? you're also super encouraged to drop by #pidgin on irc.libera.chat to talk development with the crew 🌸 no cap, they'd love to see you.

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

go look at these, iykyk:

• http://pidgin.im/
• http://developer.pidgin.im/
• purple-remote(1)
• pidgin(1)

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⚖️ LICENSE ⚖️

this program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

this program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. see the GNU General Public License for more details.

you should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02111-1301 USA

fr fr, read the license. it's literally the whole vibe check for what you're allowed to do 💖

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Sadrul Habib Chowdhury <sadrul@users.sourceforge.net>

this manpage was written by Sadrul Habib Chowdhury <sadrul@users.sourceforge.net> and Dennis Ristuccia <dennis@dennisr.net>. iconic behavior, we stan 🎀

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and that's a wrap bestie!! this page came from finch(1) and the date on it is 2025-05-25 🦋 thanks for reading all the way through, you're literally the bestie of all time. go forth and vibe in your terminal 💜✨