Ever wish you could be the omnipresent deity of your favorite IRC channels, never missing a single cat meme or heated debate about tabs vs. spaces? Meet ZNC, the IRC bouncer that ensures you’re always in the loop, even when you're off pretending to be productive. Think of it as your personal 24/7 nightclub bouncer, but instead of keeping people out, it keeps you perpetually in! With ZNC, you can finally achieve that elusive dream of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. So go ahead, take a nap, walk the dog, or binge-watch that series—ZNC’s got your back, ensuring you never miss a beat in the endless symphony of IRC chatter. Who needs sleep when you have ZNC?

"Forget about bouncers" became a real sentence because of The Lounge: a Node.js web IRC client that holds persistent connections to your networks 24/7, logging everything while you sleep, so closing the browser tab never means missing a message or losing your place in a channel. Open it again from any device - desktop, phone, tablet - and you resume exactly where you left off, with full history synchronized. Because it combines bouncer and client in one process, the experience feels like a modern chat app rather than 1990s infrastructure: push notifications for highlights and private messages (with self-generated VAPID keys, so even Web Push needs no third-party service), automatic link previews, inline file and image uploads, and full IRCv3 protocol support. It installs as a progressive web app from any modern browser, so phones get a native-feel client without an app store. Multi-user support means one instance serves your whole team or community, each user with their own networks and history, and LDAP integration ties into existing authentication. A public mode alternatively serves as an open, registration-free web chat for events or support channels. MIT-licensed, born as a fork of Shout, and a fixture of self-hosting stacks since.