On Unix-like operating systems, the talk command provides a text chat interface which lets you communicate in real time with other logged-in users.

Description

Talk is a visual communication program which copies lines from your terminal to that of another user, much like an instant messenger service. When first called, talk contacts the talk daemon on the other user’s machine, which sends the message below.

  • Description
  • Syntax
  • Examples
  • Related commands
  • Linux commands help

Message from [email protected]_machine… talk: connection requested by [email protected]_machine. talk: respond with: talk [email protected]_machine

to that user. At this point, he then replies by typing

talk [email protected]_machine

It doesn’t matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as his login name is the same. Once communication is established, the two parties may type simultaneously; their output appears in separate windows. Typing control-L (^L) causes the screen to be reprinted. The erase, kill line, and word erase characters (normally ^H, ^U, and ^W, respectively) will behave normally. To exit, type the interrupt character (normally ^C); talk then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal to its previous state.

talk supports scrollback; use esc-p and esc-n to scroll your window, and ctrl-p and ctrl-n to scroll the other window.

If you do not want to receive talk requests, you may block them using the mesg command. By default, talk requests are normally not blocked. Certain commands, in particular nroff, pine, and pr, may block messages temporarily to preserve their output.

Syntax

talk person [ttyname]

Options

Examples

talk hope

Talk to user hope.

mesg — Control if (non-root) users can send messages to your terminal.wall — Send a message to all logged-in users.who — Report which users are logged in to the system.write — Send a message to another user.