How to get UTF-8 to work with mIRC

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To get UTF-8 working properly with mIRC, you need atleast version 6.17 of mIRC which you can get here: http://www.mirc.com/get.html.

mIRC Options dialog - IRC - Messages section.

Displaying UTF-8

In order to display UTF-8 properly, there are a few settings in the options you need to set. They are located under IRC - Messages, and they are called "UTF-8 display", "Multibyte display" and "Multibyte editbox". Make sure they are checked. Also you need to make sure that the "SJIS/JIS conversion" option is unchecked, as this is not ASCII 7-bit compatible. Then press the OK button, and presto, you can now see UTF-8!

Note: However you can not send text to others using UTF-8 by just doing this! (see below)
mIRC Channel Fonts dialog

Sending text with UTF-8

When it comes to sending text with UTF-8, mIRC is a bit ... odd. You need to consider if every channel you will be sending text to will have UTF-8 enabled clients. (Note that most clients except mIRC have been UTF-8 enabled for years.)

  1. Go to the font window for any channel.
    1. Located either under View -> Fonts...
    2. or under System-menu -> Fonts... (Note: the system-menu is located in the button in the top left hand corner of a window, i.e. the button you usually double-click to close a window.)
  2. In the UTF-8 list, you should select "Display and encode" in order to send text as UTF-8.
  3. If you want to send text as UTF-8 in every channel you should select the checkbox marked "Set as default channel font".
  4. Then click the "OK" button.
Note: After you have done this for your channels, you should do the same thing for your Private Chats.


Advanced selection

You do not need to read this section if you don't feel the need for it.

If you only want to send text as UTF-8 in individual channels, you should leave the checkbox "Set as default channel font" empty.

If however you want to send UTF-8 in most channels, but only in some send text as whatever codepage you have, you should tick the checkbox, and simply change the option in the channels where you don't want to send text as UTF-8.

This means that mIRC allows you to choose what options to use in any and every channel if you need it.

Troubleshooting

  • Q: I have changed all of these settings but I still get strange symbols or empty boxes when someone sends UTF-8 encoded text to me!
  • A: This means you don't use a font that has the characters being used. If you want a font with most unicode characters, use this:
    http://www.lightworker.com/Download/Fonts/ARIALUNI.TTF
    Warning: this font is 22MB large!
  • Q: Well, I'm not sure what other questions there are, so this is the end.
  • A: Ok, we'll call it a night then.
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