The User Interface - Play Mode

Screen View

When you first open the app, you will be presented with the screen shown below. It is the main user interface with tooltip guide enabled to guide you through the user interface of the app. You can disable the tooltip guide in settings page when you are already familiar with the app.

The app has five modes, namely: Play Mode, PGN Mode, Prepare Mode, Study Mode, and Train Mode. There are a lot of common menu items in every mode but there are also contextual menu items which are available only to a particular mode. The main menu in Play Mode is shown below.

Main Menu Items

Manage Repertoire: Here is where you create and edit your openings and topic repertoire.
New Game: Starts a new game with initial position and white to move.
Set Up Board Position: Starts a new game with custom starting position, perhaps within middle game or end game phase.
Openings: This is a list of ECO openings that you can start with when creating your opening repertoire.
Load/Save File: Here is where you can load a PGN file or a FEN file to review or edit with the built-in PGN reviewer/editor. You can add some variations to a game, add some nags and positional assessments, add some colored graphic squares and arrows to specify your point in a particular position and then save the game back to the same PGN file or to a new PGN file.
Select Game: If you previously loaded a PGN file, this menu option will re-display the list of games in that PGN file.
Database: Here is where you can back-up, restore or reset your database. You can also check database integrity here and automatically correct errors in the database. If you want to delete all positional comments in all your openings you can do it here in one command. On a one note, you can not undo the process unless you backed up the database before you did deleted all positional comments. Reminder: always back-up your database regularly to prevent data loss.
Manage Chess Engines: If you downloaded chess engines from Google Play store, you can install chess engines here and do some other chess engine settings.
Settings: Here is where you change the settings of the app. There are three main categories namely:
- Repertoire - all settings referring to repertoire mode (Prepare, Study, & Train) can be changed here
- General Appearance - all settings referring to the looks and feel of the app can be changed here.
- General Behavior - all settings referring to general behavior of the app can be changed here.
- PGN - all settings referring to PGN Mode can be changed here.
Bug Report: Whenever you encountered a bug in the app that must be fixed you can report it here.
Rate This App: Here is where you can rate the app and write your review.
Tooltip Guide: Whenever you want to activate tooltip guide you can choose this menu option.
About: Some information about the app.
Exit App: As the name implies.

Buttons

Play Menu Button - click this button to show a special menu available only in Play Mode.

Engine Button - click engine button to activate analysis engine.

Rewind Button - click this button to rewind move list, in this case, go to initial position and discard all moves made.

Back Button - If the opponent moved and you clicked this button two moves will be discarded but if the opponent has not yet moved only one move will be discarded.

Forward Button - If its opponents turn and you clicked this button the engine will be forced to make move but if it's players turn and you clicked this button there's no effect.

Pop-up Menus

Long tap on the chess board and a pop-up menu shown below will appear.

Clipboard:
- Copy Game to Clipboard - copy the current game to system's clipboard memory that can be pasted in another app.
- Copy Position to Clipboard - copies the current board position to system's clipboard memory that can be pasted in another app.
- Paste from Clipboard - if a game was previously copied then this menu item will paste a game from clipboard into the chessboard. If a board position was previously copied then this menu item will paste a board position from the clipboard to the chessboard..
Share Game as PGN: The current game will be shared to other apps as a PGN game.
Share Board as Image: The current board position will be shared to other apps as jpeg file image.
Go to Starting Position: The current game will be discarded and the board will be initialized to starting position.