Makes me wonder if moving away from discord back to IRC would be a fun move. But I think we'd miss mobile access and accounts on different devices maybe? Any thoughts?

I consciously use IRC like that: I don't have a bouncer, and connect only when I feel bored and want to see what is going in some channels (nowadays mostly just #emacs on Libera). I can only follow the conversation when I am online and there, and when I leave there is nothing to catch up to. In some sense it is like a digital third-space as oppose to a permanent dual presence that I have to share my attention with. Depending on your use-case this is not ideal, but for me it is a nice, relaxing addition to a lazy weekend evening when I have nothing better to do.

There are irc clients that work on mobile, like this one from the original author of sway: https://codeberg.org/emersion/goguma

It’s just they need a bouncer (an always online irc server you run) for things like push notifications (and chat history on servers without the chat history extension).

Bouncers (and some IRC v3 extensions on newer servers) allow you to be logged in to the same account from different devices.

I’ve also had some fun writing a bridge from discord to irc for some personal discord servers (but it uses some account impersonation hijinks that make it impractical for other to use).

IRCv3 gives you all of that, and I'm working on an ircd that has builtin support for multi-device access & chat history (which covers mobile between the two --- there are improvements you can do on top of that, but those two are kind of the foundation).

I'm also extending it with support for Discord/Matrix/etc-esque communities (in a 100% standard-client-compatible way).

It’s a matter of having a good client. Mango will give you everything you mentioned … https://mangoirc.chat

Goguma is an IRC client which runs on Linux Mobile, iOS and Android.

really need the simple voice chat for me to use it.

in general discord has a very bad app and usability, irc regardless of client is a clear upgrade

I mean, it seemed mobile enough for that tv presenter to get caught on a plane being a pedo on IRC

why wouldn’t mobile access work? Its just a protocol

IMO those are the main reasons IRC isn't still used. It's basically only usable on a desktop or always-stationary laptop, or with a bouncer which is obviously expensive to set up and doesn't provide a good user experience.