Better Ignores in Weechat 4.2.0

If you’re like me, you waste a bit too much time on IRC. Spend enough time online and eventually you’ll run into someone you’d rather not talk to.

Weechat has had the ability to ignore users for a long time, but once a user is ignored, you can’t retroactively disable the ignore to see what they’ve said. This can be a problem if you’re ignoring someone who’s involved in a conversation you’re interested in.

Well, in Weechat 4.2.0, a new option irc.look.ignore_tag_messages was added, which allows you to tag messages from ignored users instead of removing them. You can then add a filter for the tagged messages, which can be enabled or disabled dynamically.

To enable the feature, you can run the following in Weechat:

/set irc.look.ignore_tag_messages on
/filter add ignored * irc_ignored *

Now you can manage your ignores as usual (e.g. /ignore add <nick>) and those users will be hidden. You can use the following commands to toggle visibility of ignored users:

/filter disable ignored
/filter enable ignored

Or, for quicker access, bind toggle to a key (run /key bind meta-i first to make sure it’s not already bound):

/key bind meta-i /filter toggle ignored

Happy chatting!