For people who prefer to use a third-party messaging client, Slack offers an IRC and XMPP gateway.

Unfortunately, support for gateways is ending. Starting on May 15th, it will no longer be possible to connect to Slack using the IRC and XMPP gateways. Learn more

Turn on gateway access

Here's how to turn on workspace-wide gateway access:

Note: The gateway is disabled by default because Slack can make no guarantee about the security of any IRC/XMPP client (including transport encryption or data security). We recommend you enable only the gateways you intend to use and trust only those clients you have evaluated thoroughly. For the highest level of security, we recommend using only Slack's desktop, web, and mobile clients.

Connect to a gateway

Once the gateway is enabled, members can get connection instructions and their unique gateway password at my.slack.com/account/gateways.

Should your gateway password ever be compromised, please submit a help request so we can generate a new password for your account. Your Workspace Owner can immediately disconnect all active gateway connections — and block any new ones — by disabling the gateway for the team.

Gateway limitations

While the Slack gateways allow you to use XMPP or IRC to communicate within your workspace, there are some limitations:

• Slack can't be used to communicate between Slack workspaces with other XMPP and IRC servers
• Slack can't be used to connect to another IRC channel or XMPP server
• Shared channels (beta) can't be used with XMPP or IRC gateways 

If you'd like to build an integration to pass messages to and from your workspace, you can use our HTTP-based API. 

IRC voice messages

When a member becomes active or inactive in Slack, some IRC clients display a message such as @username voice, or @username de-voice.

To turn on these messages, simply append -voice to your IRC password, then re-launch your client. These messages should then appear.