ChessView vs Budbrain's Chess

See a chess position anywhere — in a book, on another screen, on the table in front of you — and have it on a board you can play with, in seconds. ChessView is a study tool, not another place to play. Scan a position with the camera or from a screenshot, open a PGN file, or pull in your Chess.com games — then replay them, branch off, and work out what actually happened. Free, offline, no account, no ads, no tracking. SCAN A POSITION FROM A PHOTO Point the camera at a real board, or choose a screenshot from Chess.com, Lichess or a chess book. ChessView reads the position and puts it on your board. Anything it misreads, you fix in the position editor — then start playing it out. PLAY IT OUT ON A REAL BOARD Full move validation: legal moves, en passant, castling, promotion. Drag the pieces, step back and forth through the whole game, flip the board, and branch off wherever you want to see what would have happened. OPEN PGN AND FEN FROM ANYWHERE PGN files from Files, Mail, Messages or any app that can share them. Paste a FEN string and it loads. Export any position or game as PGN, FEN or a PNG image, and share it in one tap. YOUR CHESS.COM GAMES, OFFLINE Type your username, pick a month, and your games are in the library — ready to replay any time, with or without a connection. STUDY THE CLASSICS Famous games come built in — Byrne–Fischer, Morphy, Short–Timman, Lasker–Thomas — so there is always a position worth looking at. SEE THE EVALUATION Evaluations and main lines come from the Lichess cloud database: free, fast, no account needed. For positions the database doesn't know, ChessView offers a sensible continuation of its own. OPTIONAL: COMMENTARY IN PLAIN WORDS Add your own OpenAI API key and ChessView will explain a position or a whole game in sentences — the plan, the key ideas, the moment it turned. Entirely optional: everything above works without it. Your key is stored in the iOS Keychain, used only from your device, and never sent to us. PRIVACY, ACTUALLY No account. No ads. No analytics. No tracking. Your games and your settings stay on your iPhone and iPad. WHY I BUILT IT Getting a chess position onto my phone used to be absurdly hard. A diagram in a book, a screenshot from a game, a FEN string someone sent me — none of it could just be opened and played through on an iPhone. PGN files were worse. So I built the app I wanted: open anything, put it on a real board, move the pieces. — Pavel, solo developer Designed for iPhone and iPad.

Budbrain's Chess is a lovingly crafted chess game with 100 levels — from ELO 150 for beginners to ELO 1900 for club players. The warm parchment theme feels like an old chess notebook and turns every game into a quiet moment. 100 LEVELS IN 10 STAGES The AI grows stronger stage by stage. FAIR HANDICAP SYSTEM On the lowest levels the opponent plays without a queen, without knights, or only with king and pawns. That way beginners get a real chance to learn chess step by step. HELPERS FOR EVERY SKILL LEVEL Tap a piece to see all legal moves. The hint button suggests a good move. Threatened own pieces blink red. Board flip, undo and auto-save are all included. 3-STAR RATING Every won game is rated with 1, 2 or 3 stars — depending on how efficiently you moved. Using the hint caps the rating at 1 star: fair play counts. 22 LANGUAGES Pick manually or auto-detect from the system. Full VoiceOver support with localised announcements for every piece and move. Plays entirely offline. No account. No cloud. Sound effects (CC0) for move, check, mate, win and loss. Haptic feedback optional.