The Lounge Mobile Format

A touch-friendly IRC formatting toolbar for The Lounge mobile web client.

It adds a compact T button inside the message input so mobile users can apply IRC formatting without memorising control codes or using a hardware keyboard.

Features

• Input-corner text formatting button designed for mobile/touch use
• Toolbar for:
  • Bold
  • Italic
  • Underline
  • Strikethrough
  • Monospace
  • IRC foreground colours
  • Reset formatting
• Compact 16-colour IRC palette
• Works with selected text or inserts formatting codes at the cursor
• Tracks active formatting state near the cursor
• Keeps The Lounge's native scroll-to-bottom button usable on mobile
• No runtime dependencies

Installation

The Lounge plugins are installed into the The Lounge data/config directory. Where that lives depends on how you self-host The Lounge.

1. Standard npm install

If The Lounge is installed normally on the host:

thelounge install thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
thelounge restart

If your service is managed by systemd, restart it instead:

sudo systemctl restart thelounge

2. Docker / Docker Compose with a mounted data directory

Most Docker installs mount the The Lounge data directory, commonly something like:

volumes:
  - /path/on/host/thelounge:/var/opt/thelounge

Install the plugin from inside the running container:

docker exec -it thelounge thelounge install thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
docker restart thelounge

If your container has a different name, replace thelounge with your container name:

docker ps

With Docker Compose:

docker compose exec thelounge thelounge install thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
docker compose restart thelounge

3. Docker install from a local checkout

Useful when testing changes before publishing to npm.

If your local checkout is mounted into the container:

docker compose exec thelounge thelounge install /path/inside/container/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
docker compose restart thelounge

Or install into the host-mounted packages directory manually:

cd /path/on/host/thelounge/packages
npm install /path/on/host/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
docker restart thelounge

4. Install directly from GitHub

Once the repository is public, you can install from GitHub instead of npm:

thelounge install github:binkiewka/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format

or with npm syntax from the The Lounge packages directory:

cd /path/to/thelounge/packages
npm install github:binkiewka/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format

Docker example:

docker exec -it thelounge thelounge install github:binkiewka/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
docker restart thelounge

If your GitHub username/org differs, replace binkiewka with the actual owner.

5. Manual install into The Lounge packages directory

If thelounge install is not available in your setup:

cd /path/to/thelounge/packages
npm install thelounge-plugin-mobile-format

Then restart The Lounge.

Common package locations:

• Bare-metal Linux: ~/.thelounge/packages
• Docker official image with mounted data: /var/opt/thelounge/packages inside the container
• Host bind mount: whatever host path you mounted to /var/opt/thelounge

Usage

1. Open The Lounge on a phone or touch device.
2. Tap the T button in the message input.
3. Tap a formatting option.
4. Type normally, or select text first and then apply formatting.
5. Tap the colour button to open the colour palette.
6. Pick a colour to apply it; the palette closes automatically.
7. Tap the colour button again if you opened the palette and changed your mind.

How it works

The plugin registers a small client-side script and stylesheet with The Lounge:

• index.js registers public assets and injects the client script into The Lounge's HTML template.
• plugin.js creates the formatting toggle, toolbar, colour palette, and IRC control-code insertion logic.
• plugin.css handles mobile-friendly positioning and styling.

The inserted formatting codes are standard IRC control characters, so messages remain compatible with other IRC clients.

IRC formatting controls

| Format | IRC control | | --- | --- | | Bold | \x02 | | Colour | \x03NN | | Italic | \x1D | | Strikethrough | \x1E | | Underline | \x1F | | Monospace | \x11 | | Reset | \x0F |

Compatibility

• The Lounge: >= 4.0.0
• Designed primarily for mobile/touch layouts
• Also works on desktop browsers

Development

Clone the repo, edit the files, then install the local package into your The Lounge instance:

git clone https://github.com/binkiewka/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format.git
cd thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
npm test
npm pack --dry-run

Local install:

thelounge install /path/to/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format

Docker local install example:

docker exec -it thelounge thelounge install /path/inside/container/thelounge-plugin-mobile-format
docker restart thelounge

Publishing to npm

npm test
npm pack --dry-run
npm publish

Before publishing a new release, update:

• version in package.json
• CHANGELOG.md

License

MIT © Tomasz Binkiewicz