Dedicated to chess on Mac

Following software is designed for and runs on mac OS big sur and mac OS Monterey. Since Mac OS X 11, ARM support is added when installed on a machine with an M1 processor. x86 programs (intel) will run natively on intel processors, and through emulation on M1 processors. Please refer to M1 if you have a newer processor.

• Apple chess: A chess program installed by default on macOS. Includes the sjeng engine.

• Scid: A chess database program. Allows to plug in engines. See also ChessX, Scid vs PC and Scid vs Mac

• BanksiaGUI: A free chess program. Allows to play chess, organise chess engine tournaments, play online chess and plenty of other features. A must have. See also the open source Banksia.

• HIARCS Chess Explorer: A commercial chess database, analysis and playing program. Interfaces with command line chess programs. See also Deep HIARCS Chess Explorer

• Shredder 13 Series: A commerial chess playing program. See also Shredder Classic 5 and Deep Shredder 13

Some of the applications above allow you to install command line based chess engines. They have to support the UCI or Xboard (winboard/CECP) protocol.

• Stockfish: World champion of chess programs. Elo 3700 with NNUE. Elo 3500 without. Can be configured to play at less strength. Open source and available on all platforms.

• Dragon: A very strong contender for the first place. Elo 3500. Can be configured to play at less strength. Human like play. Commercial engine. Successor to Komodo.

• Komodo: Free older version (up to version 12) preceeding dragon. Elo 2750. Can be configured to play at less strength. Human like play. See also Dragon.

• Crafty: The refernce in open source chess programs. Elo 2600.

• Sjeng: Engine included in apple chess. Based on Faile. Elo 2450. See also deep sjeng.

• HIARCS: A strong commercial engine with human like play.

• Belofte: Self written chess program. Elo 1200.

Please refer to the downloads page for more information on where to find them.