for FREE

Stockfish Chess (formerly Stockfish) is a free and open-source macOS application that enables you to play chess by yourself on a virtual board and view an analysis of the game. Stockfish uses one of the most powerful chess engines (with the same name) to provide quick chess analysis.

The application provides on-the-spot suggestions of what the next move should be. As soon as you make a move, Stockfish Chess calculates the best move and displays it on the board with a red arrow. If you do not make a suggested move, the app will calculate the possibilities based on the last move.

The game board and chess pieces are beautifully designed and look great on any display, especially on Retina-supporting devices. What’s more, Stockfish Chess can be played in full-screen mode, but only on OS X Lion or later.

There is the possibility to copy the FEN strings to your clipboard and even to save screenshots as PNGs. As far as the navigation goes, the app supports accessing the previous or next moves and browsing through FEN strings via the arrow keys.

If you want to stop the analysis and continue another time, Stockfish Chess has got you covered. You can save the game state as .pgn files and restore them later. Also, in the preferences window, you can configure the analysis speed based on your Mac’s CPU.

Taking everything into consideration, the Stockfish Chess app offers you the possibility to see one of the most powerful chess analysis engines in the world in action. The app looks gorgeous and the indications are simple to observe.