Enabling UTF-8 in Putty for irssi

Startup your putty and go to Translations and from there select UTF-8. If you have already connected to server, you can go into settings also and change Translation the same way.

How to Enable UTF-8 in PuTTY for irssi (and Save It as Default)

Why This Matters When using irssi (a popular terminal-based IRC client) via PuTTY, you may see weird characters or broken symbols if the text encoding isn’t set properly.

To fix this, you need to enable UTF-8 encoding in PuTTY. UTF-8 is a modern character encoding that properly displays international characters, emojis, symbols, and more.

Step-by-Step: Enabling UTF-8 in PuTTY

If You Haven’t Connected Yet: 

Open PuTTY

In the left-hand menu, go to: Window > Translation

Under Character Set Translation, change:

Remote character set to UTF-8

(Optional but recommended) Go back to the Session section at the top of the menu.

Choose Default Settings or your saved seedbox connection from the list.

Click Save to make this the default for future connections.

Now every time you connect, PuTTY will use UTF-8 and irssi will display characters correctly.

If You're Already Connected to a Server:

You can still change the setting while connected:

Right-click the PuTTY window title bar

Select Change Settings...

Go to: Window > Translation

Set the character set to UTF-8

Click Apply

This change will take effect immediately for your current session.

Making UTF-8 the Default (Recommended)

To avoid having to set UTF-8 every time:

Before connecting, open PuTTY.

Go to: Window > Translation

Set the character set to UTF-8

Return to Session at the top.

Select Default Settings in the list (or your preferred saved profile).

Click Save

Now PuTTY will always use UTF-8 by default.