JFXChess - Chess GUI

About

JFXChess is a cross-platform chess graphical user interface.

• based around one of the world's best chess program Stockfish
• play against the computer
• adjust strength levels to match your skill
• enter, edit and analyse games
• fully automatic game analysis
• read and save games in standard PGN format
• copy and paste FEN positions and pgn games from clipboard
• cross-platform: modern look on Linux and Windows
• handle large (i.e. 1 GB) PGN files
• easy and intuitive GUI
• free software (GNU GPL 2), no adware/spyware

Download

Current Version: 5.0.0

• Windows
  • Exe Installer
  • Zip Folder
• Linux
  • install .deb
  • or generic Java .jar
  • or SNAP

Blog

Once in a while I blog about the development of JFXChess at my blog.

Changelog

Version 5.0.0 (April 2026)

• faster startup
• non-blurry fonts
• more UI themes
• barchart for game evaluation
• numerous bugfixes
• more packaging formats

Version 4.6.0 (December 2025)

• improved engine communication

Version 4.5.0 (October 2025)

• new dark and light theme
• packaged Stockfish 17.1
• new bots to play against
• more engine info
• drag 'n' drop support (thanks @TTorell)
• ability to select own opening book (can be created by e.g. bookmaker)
• various bugfixes

Version 4.3.0 (December 2024)

• improved drag'n'drop pieces to setup a new position
• finer-grained centipawn threshold when analysing games
• new opening book based on lichess master games
• packaged stockfish 17
• multipv up to 64 lines (for custom engines; for packaged engine 4 lines)
• reworked the dialog to enter game information to prevent accidently entering wrong date formats
• added ability to setup up header tags for White and Black's Elo
• ability to setup en passant square when entering a new position
• better word wrapping when entering text comments
• when opening a PGN, always scroll to entry 0
• better support for PGN files in UTF-8; removed support for legacy iso-latin-1 encodings
• moved linux snap to core22
• fixed a bug where pasting pgn or fen via clipboard did not work
• fixed a bug where replacing (overwriting) a game in a PGN did not work
• fixed a bug where the last save and open directory path where not remembered
• fixed a bug where the game result was not stored in PGN despite being set in game information dialog

Version 4.2.1 (July 2022)

• drag and drop when setting up a position (thx @TTorel)
• adjust strength for any engine that supports 'uciLimitStrength'
• flat style dialogs to better match theme
• nicer looking opening book view
• icon to indicate whose turn it is
• computer's books moves are not selected randomly, but depend on chosen engine strength and opening
• moves in bookview are shown in SAN notation instead of uci notation
• some layout fixes
• deleting games in database view
• several bugfixes

Version 4.2.0 (Dec 2021)

• opening book with statistics
• dark mode
• several bugfixes

Version 4.1.1 (Jan 2021)

• fixed bug when starting a new game

Version 4.1.0 (Jan 2021)

• several bugfixes (see issue tracker)
• database: edit & save for large PGNs
• colorize last move
• drawing arrows & colorizing fields
• keyboard shortcuts
• fullscreen mode
• option to hide toolbar

Version 4.0.0 (Oct 2020)

• complete rewrite
• position search even in very large PGN files

Version 3.2.1 (Dec 2019)

• bug fix in displaying move and position annotations
• ability to flip board when entering a new position

Version 3.2.0 (July 2019)

• MultiPV up to 4 lines
• ability to handle and search (metadata) of large (> 1 GB) PGN files
• user defined font-sizes

Donate

You can support the development of JFXChess by donating via PayPal.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• CTRL + N : New Game
• CTRL + O : Open File (.pgn)
• CTRL + S : Save Game
• CTRL + C : Copy Game (.pgn) to clipboard
• CTRL + V : Paste Game (.pgn) or position (FEN) from clipboard
• CTRL + E : Setup new position
• CTRL + F : Flip Board
• CTRL + A : Start Engine
• CTRL + M : Stop Engine
• CTRL + RIGHT ARROW : Load next game (when .pgn has been opened)
• CTRL + LEFT ARROW : Load previous game (when .pgn has been opened)

Roadmap

various ideas for future versions:

• opening book support
• [DONE] replace Stockfish skill level with UciLimitStrength (any engine)
• more options to edit/replace/add games in pgn files
• [DONE] visual representation (i.e. graph) of game progress
• ability to set default database
• ship a default database of a few thousand interesting games
• option to show arrow that illustrates engine top-move in analysis
• [DONE] "drag" pieces in enter-position dialog
• [DONE] show more engine info: Tablebase Hits and Hash percentage
• ship with pre-configured 4-piece (size!) tablebases
• ability to click on engine lines
• drag and drop for pgn files