irssi: Where do Private messages go?

Solution 1:

Private messages should create another window and highlight it in a different color.

By default, these are the following colors and their meanings in IRSSI:

• White - Part/Quit/Join
• Bold White - Unread channel messages
• Bold red/pink - Unread channel highlights or private messages

See the [Act: 2,3,4,5] text? Those numbers represent unread notifications. 2 is a private message, 3 is a ping in a channel, 4 is an unread message, and 5 is someone joining or leaving.

You can access them by cycling through with Ctrl+N or Ctrl+P, or by typing /window N, where N is the window number.