Snap Chess

Snap Chess is a chessboard that lives in the corner of your screen. There is no launcher and no menu. Move your mouse over it and you can play. Move away and the board fades until it barely catches your eye. You can park it in any corner, resize it with the scroll wheel and choose how transparent it should be.

Puzzles

The game comes with over 144,000 tactical puzzles taken from real games, from mate in one to longer combinations. Most take about a minute to solve, so they fit nicely between one task and the next. If you get one wrong, you just try again. Nothing is timed. The difficulty quietly follows how well you are doing.

Playing against the computer

When you feel like a full game, switch the board to match mode. Underneath runs Stockfish, toned down to a level you can actually play against. It picks the opponent strength based on how you play, from beginner to very strong. You can undo moves, and an unfinished game waits for you after a restart.

Built to stay out of your way

• The board always stays on top of other windows
• A transparency slider, from fully visible to a faint outline
• Puzzles and games save automatically, so you can quit at any moment
• Can start together with Windows
• Works offline, no account needed