Secrets of Chess.com
In this blog, I will share some of the features that you may or may not know of on this site.
- How to draw arrows on the board
You can do this on any board automatically, except in Live chess. If you play in /live instead of /play, you will need to enable this option. Otherwise, it will be on automatically. To enable this option in Live chess, click on the gear icon next to the board:
Then toggle the switch to draw arrows and highlights. Finally, don't forget to click save!
You can also find this option in your account settings under the Live Chess settings.
- Controls
To draw an arrow, simply right-click and drag your mouse across the board in the direction you want the arrow to point. Please see how to right-click on a Mac if you don't have a two-button mouse!
To draw a knight's move arrow, click and drag over the squares you want the arrow to cover. When you let go of the right mouse button, the arrow will appear. The point of the arrow will be wherever you let go of your mouse button.
- Colours
The default arrow is yellow, but you can also hold Ctrl to draw a red arrow, hold Alt to draw a blue arrow or hold Shift to draw a green arrow.
Try it on any board on Chess.com to practice!
- How to highlight squares on the board
Similar to arrows, you can choose to highlight in red, green, yellow or blue colour. But in the case of squares, the default colour is red.
Right-click on the square to turn it red.
Control+Right click on the square to turn it yellow
Alt+Right click on the square to turn it blue
Shift+Right click on the square to turn it green
To clear all arrows and colors from the board, simply left-click anywhere on the board.
How to draw emojis on the board
To add an emoji to the board, simply hold down the E key on your keyboard and click on a square.
This will open the emoji menu, so you can add an emoji to that square:
Scroll down to see even more emojis than are pictured above. Then, click on an emoji to add it to the square:
Your opponent can not see the emojis; they are only for you and your viewers to see.
Click on the square again to remove the emoji. Likewise, making a move on the board will also remove the emoji.
You can see the shortcut for each emoji by hovering over it with your mouse:
Though you can't see the mouse cursor in the screenshot, it is hovering over the "!!" emoji.
We see that the shortcut for this emoji is B + left click. So if you want to be able to add the "!!" emoji without opening the menu on stream, you can simply hold B on your keyboard and left-click on the square to add the emoji directly.
Hover over any emoji to see its shortcut.
Have fun entertaining your viewers and add clarity to your lesson videos with emojis!
