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man(1) Profanity XMPP client man(1) NAME Profanity - a simple console based XMPP chat client. SYNOPSIS profanity [-vh] [-l level] [-a account] DESCRIPTION Profanity is a simple lightweight console based XMPP chat client. Its em- phasis is on having a simple and configurable command driven UI, see the homepage at: <https://profanity-im.github.io> OPTIONS -v, --version Show version and build information. -h, --help Show help on command line arguments. -a, --account ACCOUNT Auto connect to an account on startup, ACCOUNT must be an existing account. -c, --config Use an alternative config file. -l, --log LEVEL Set the logging level, LEVEL may be set to DEBUG, INFO (the de- fault), WARN or ERROR. -f, --logfile Specify a different logfile -r, --cmd Specify the commands that should be run right after starting up. This can be given multiple times, e.g. profanity --cmd /foo --cmd "/sleep 10" --cmd /quit -t, --theme THEME Specify which theme to use. THEME must be one of the themes in- stalled in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/profanity/themes KEYBINDINGS Tab, Shift+Tab Tab completion next, previous. Works for commands, nicks and quotes (when input line starts with >). ALT+1..Alt-0 or F1..F10 Choose window 1..10. ALT+q..Alt-p (in QWERTY layout) Choose window 11..20. ALT+LEFT Choose previous chat window. ALT+RIGHT Choose next chat window. PAGEUP Page the active window up. PAGEDOWN Page the active window down. ALT+PAGEUP Page the occupants or roster panel up. ALT+PAGEDOWN Page the occupants or roster panel down. ALT+UP or ALT+WHEELUP Scroll up. Note: limited support for scrolling with mouse wheel, please, get in touch with devs if you know how to add support for other terminals. ALT+DOWN or ALT+WHEELDOWN Scroll down. See note above. ALT+a Jump to the next unread window. ALT+v Mark current window for later reading with an attention flag. ALT+m Switch between windows marked with the attention flag. ALT+ENTER Add newline character without sending a message/command. ALT+c Run external editor (see profanity-editor(1)) for current input line. CTRL+DOWN Store current input line in history but do not execute it. Note: Profanity is using GNU Readline library to handle input so default configuration file ~/.inputrc affects operation. In addition to that $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/profanity/inputrc is read after all default keybindigs are set so one can override or add settings there. For reference, see Readline documentation: info readline "Command Line Editing" "Readline Init File" "Readline Init File Syntax" and the list of available Profanity commands in inputwin.c. Standard Readline keybindings are supported, including C-r for interactive history search and C-x C-r for reloading inputrc without restart. USING PROFANITY The first step is to connect to an XMPP Server. The /connect and /account command can be used to setup the XMPP accounts within profanity (see pro- fanity-connect(1) and profanity-account(1)) with an existing XMPP Account. The /register command can be used to register an account on a server. pro- fanity-register(1) Use the /help commands connection command in profanity to display more commands for managing your connection. The roster is your address book. By default, your roster will be shown in "window 1" which is the profanity /console. It's possible to /roster hide and to /roster show the address book in the profanity console. Buddies can be added via /roster add JID. To see the online status of your contacts, the /sub command can be used to manage subscriptions to the presence of contacts. /sub request will send a request. /sub allow is used to approve a contact's subscription request. Use /help commands roster to get a list of commands which can be used to manage your roster. Open chat windows can been shown by /wins command. Jumping to a window can be done via /win NUMBER or /win JID. profanity supports autocompletion with TAB-Key. The /msg command can be used to start a chat with your contact. Groupchats can be joined with the /join command or managed within the ac- count's bookmark. If the group chat is stored in the bookmarks, the group chat can be set to auto-join. If the auto-join is switched off, use /bookmark join to join the group chat. The /sendfile and /url command can be used to share and down- load files. Enter > and press the TAB key to quote an existing message in the chat window. The user guide can be found at <https://profanity-im.github.io/user- guide.html>. ENCRYPTION Profanity supports various kinds of encryption: OMEMO, OTR, PGP, OX. You can only enable one of them per correspondent at a time. OMEMO OMEMO (/omemo) is defined in XEP-0384. It uses an implementation of the Signal protocol for key management and to synchronize messages among different clients. It works even when other clients are of- fline. And offers Perfect Forward Secrecy and Plausible deniability. Servers need to support PEP (XEP-0163). We implement the "siacs" version of OMEMO. Version 0.3.0, which is currently the widest adopted option. OMEMO is the only encryption option in Profanity that also supports encryption for MUCs (XEP-0045) and file transfer via HTTP upload (XEP-0363). OTR OTR (/otr) is defined in XEP-0364. It uses a combination of the AES symmetric-key algorithm, the DiffieaHellman key exchange, and the SHA-1 hash function. It offers deniable authentication and Perfect Forward Secrecy. To initialize a session both clients need to be on- line at the same time. A session is between two clients, so multi- client chats are not working. Which is a feature not a bug. OTR does by design not work for MUCs. OpenPGP OpenPGP (/pgp) is defined in XEP-0027. Is uses a public and secret key. It is also known as Legacy OpenPGP and has been deprecated. It doesn't provide protection against replay attacks. MUCs and file transfer via HTTP upload are not specified and thus not supported. OX OX (/ox) is defined in XEP-0373 and XEP-0374. It's a more modern way to use OpenPGP on XMPP and tries to fix the shortcomings of legacy XEP-0027. Servers need to support PEP (XEP-0163). MUCs and file transfer via HTTP upload are not specified and thus not supported. DETAILS For more details read the relevant XEPs and look at the overview at <https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/XMPP_E2E_Security> TERMINOLOGY There is some XMPP specific terminology that might be unknown for fresh users. We will try to describe them here since they are often references in the help and man pages. JID Stands for Jabber ID. It refers to an XMPP address. Historically XMPP was also known as Jabber. MAM Stands for Message Archive Management (XEP-0313) and describes the ability to store messages on the server and retrieve them later. MUC Stands for Mutli-User Chats (XEP-0045) and are also called, groups, group chats, chatrooms or conferences. Roster The roster is your contact list. By default displayed at the right side on the console window. See RFC6121. XEP XMPP is an extendable protocol. There are core features and optional features described in XMPP Extension Protocols, short XEPs. There are various kind of messages. 1:1 messages are regular messages from one party to another party, from one JID to the other JID. Often you have the other party added to your roster. MUC messages are messages from one party to a group chat. MUC PM (MUC private message) are messages from one party to another party which are in the same group chat. You might not have the JID of this person in your roster or don't know their JID at all. Communication is done over the MUC via the nick. Only the two parties can see the message. In the An- droid client Conversations this is displayed as "whispering". If a user leaves a MUC another user can join the MUC with the same nick unless the nick is registered. Which often isn't the case. SEE ALSO Profanity itself has a lot of built-in help. Check the /help command for more information. Type "/help help" for information on how to use help it- self. Profanity ships with one man page for each built-in command, e.g. there is profanity-account(1) for /account. CONFIGURATION Configuration for Profanity is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/profanity/profrc , details on commands for configuring Profanity can be found at <https://profanity-im.github.io/reference.html> or the respective built-in help or man pages. BUGS Bugs can either be reported by raising an issue at the Github issue tracker: <https://github.com/profanity-im/profanity/issues> or to the mailing list at: <https://lists.posteo.de/listinfo/profanity> LICENSE Copyright (C) 2012 - 2019 James Booth <boothj5web@gmail.com>. Copyright (C) 2019 - 2026 Michael Vetter <jubalh@iodoru.org>. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WAR- RANTY, to the extent permitted by law. AUTHORS/CREDITS Profanity was created by James Booth <boothj5web@gmail.com> with many con- tributions from others, see the full list at: <https://github.com/profan- ity-im/profanity/graphs/contributors> 0.18.1 2026-05-15 man(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | KEYBINDINGS | USING PROFANITY | ENCRYPTION | TERMINOLOGY | SEE ALSO | CONFIGURATION | BUGS | LICENSE | AUTHORS/CREDITS
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