Snak

Snak (Danish for "chat") was a shareware Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client written by Kent Sorensen for the Macintosh platform.^[2][3][4] Snak was distributed as shareware and could be freely used and evaluated for 30 days at no charge.^[3] After the 30-day evaluation period has ended, the program would quit after 15 minutes of use, and a registration key had to be purchased. Versions up to 4.12 run on both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X while version 5 and newer only support Mac OS X. The program is Intel Only as of version 5.3.4. The program is not fully compatible with current macOS versions^[5] and is no longer supported, with the developer stating that he is unable to create new versions due to the deprecation of the Carbon libraries.^[6] On October 10, 2018, Snak was made freeware with a license key published on the project's web site.^[7]

Snak
Original author(s)	Kent Sorensen
Initial release	3 March 1997 (1997-03-03)
Stable release	5.3.4 (March 11, 2012; 13 years ago (2012-03-11)[1]) [±]
Operating system	Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X
Platform	x86
Type	IRC client
License	Proprietary

Features

Snak supports an unlimited number of connections and channels,^[8] private chats, as well as full DCC support for file transfers and chat. It can be scripted with AppleScript and the ircII scripting language.^[9] Snak features an Actions list which makes it easy to automate responses to many common events on IRC.^[10]

Snak includes the ability for multiple panels to share the windows. A panel can contain a channel, a dialog with another user, a list, or information about a DCC file transfer. This results in an effective use of the screen space and improves the ability to follow multiple channels. A panel can be moved from one window to another by dragging the title bar or the panel tab.

Although limited support UTF-8 support has been included since version 5.1.5 (released 2006-09-23), as of December 30, 2014, full UTF-8 support is still lacking (promised for "the next major version").^[11]

Reception

Jason Parker, Assistant editor for Download.com, wrote for CNET Reviews on May 26, 2005, "If you want a great IRC chat client for Mac, Snak is hands-down the best in the category."^[12]