Chess Programs for Mac?

Hey guys, I used to have a PC and i had Fritz 14. However i recently "upgraded" to a Mac and I cant seem to find any chess software that is compatable with OSX. Anyone have any suggestions?

Mac provides a facility to allow you to run Windows programs on the Mac.

I no longer remember what it is called, but I am sure you could find it with a little investigation via Google (or something similar).

For the record, XBoard for OSX is quite feature rich and lets you analise games, play online on an ICS, or play against any UCI or XBoard(protocol) engine.  http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=53680

There is also SCID vs Mac, ChessX and a slew of other free software available.

There are many and good ones:

Scid vs Pc

Hiarcs Chess Explorer

ExaChess

i am very interested in the topic! experienced mac and pc user...

Of course all the pc people i know (and mac too through virtual machines) use chessbase.

i prefer to find a solution which will run natively to mac (since chessbase as a software isn't the best even for native windows environment)

interested in game analysis and some database games (esp analysed), support for endgame tables.

i have taken a look to these JogoReal mentioned above, and i want to add one more i bumped into, ChessKing 2016 which also had some nice features.

Has anyone used any of the following we have found so far? what about performance on mac, user interface and chess capabilities?

1. Scid vs Mac
2. Hiarcs Chess Explorer
3. ExaChess
4. ChessKing

Pros and Cons?

I own a licence to Hiarcs Chess Explorer, ExaChess, ChessKing, Chess Base 12, Fritz 13, Aquarium 2012 or so, Shredder Classic, ... some more probably?...

Scid vs Pc is the one I use. I currently maintain the Portuguese translation of the menus.

Yes, some more... like: Chess Partner 6

I use currently Windows 10, OS X El Capitan, Android 4.1 and Linux Deepin.

Better to stop here?...

I'm a mac guy in general, but I have a dedicated "chess" laptop which is Windows. It's kind of old, but if I were to replace it, it would also be with Windows.

Macs are just not there yet.

Edit: I would not dream of buying a Mac and then running chess stuff in a virtual windows machine. To me, that makes no sense architecturally or logistically, and violates my sense of feng shui.

I have a Mac. If you want something free to which you can import PGN and FEN files, then ScidvsMac is fine...but it doesn't compare to Fritz. If you want a better set-up and don't mind spending money (since you bought a Mac, it will be a drop in the bucket..well, several drops), you can get as PC emulator (a virtual machine). The two best are Parallels and VMware (mentioned above), but they are not free but are much better than the free applications. Then you need to purchase Windows 10. Then you can purchase a package from Chessbase with Fritz, Chessbase, and The Big Database. This is the stuff pros and titled players use. Chessbase won't run natively on the Mac. You can put whatever engine you want into Fritz, I believe. I think the latest Komodo is the strongest right now. I read it surpassed Stockfish, if that matters to you.

@NM ozzzie: lol. Is Feng Shui the issue, or are you saying the virtual machine would slow everything down? Or are you saying there would be bad energy? if so, you can negate the bad energy with crystals and incantations.

I am also a Mac guy and have used a VM with Windows on my notebook. It works fine for running Chessbase or Chess Assistant, Fritz and Aquarium, Fritz trainers, etc. However, I usually use Hiarcs or SCID on the Mac, as launching the virtual machine consumes resources from my Mac that I might need for work or other tasks.  

More recently I started using the IDEA feature on Aquarium, and running long analysis sessions stress the processor and the resource consumption on the VM and my Mac slows down. So I think that if you use intense, prolonged analysis features (e.g. correspondence chess at ICCF, opening preparation, exploring new lines) it is best to have a dedicated machine. You can reuse an old machine if it fast enough, but if you would go with a dedicated chess machine, it would likely be a native Windows one, with at least 6 cores (e.g. i7 6800k or better) as it would have three to four times the performance of a Parallels hosted VM on the Mac. That said, I would just use the Windows machine through windows remote desktop from my Mac (instead of using Parallels) to avoid consuming local resources. Finally, if you run long analysis sessions (e.g. nightly) you might want to have a good cooling system for the processors running at 100% for hours, so that goes more in the direction of having a desktop cabinet (e.g. thermaltake) rather than a laptop, either Windows or Mac.

I am the author of Chess Insight for macOS. This piece of software is an original development written in first place for my personal use to address the issue discussed above. I just badly wanted to have a chess app with a nice look and feel and the app works natively on my Mac to allow me to rid of Parallels and Fritz, something easy to use to organize the huge collection of pgn files and books I have, something allows me to annotate and keep in order my own OTB games. Eventually, I published it in the Mac App Store. The app is not free the cost is $24.99 which I hope not a big price for upcoming maintenance and updates. And, still, it is much more affordable than any of "commercial monsters". I hope many of you will get a tool they wanted and I will get some work to do with your feedback.

well, first of all congratulations for your effort. i use HIARCS for mac, since at the time was the best for me running natively on mac. maybe yours is also good and hopefully become even better! i might give it a try (there should be a trial version)

some questions:

which machine uses for analysis and is there a possibility to use other ones?

Can it use endgame tablebases?

does it have opening theory embedded?

Also a killer feature would be the ability to run chessbase video lessons, that's the only reason i still need fritz player through parallels.

Thank you, George, for your interest.

In the current, version Stockfish 7 is used (any amount of cores and hash size - configured through the preferences - restricted by yours hardware. )

Yep you can set a path to a folder with Syzygy tablebases

The Mac App Store, unfortunately, has not the Trial mode for paid application ... I can attach some screenshots and provide a link to official site:

No opening explorer so far, but I have some plans to embed that.

Software dedicated site: Chess Insight

ChessBase is Chessbase ... it uses it's own proprietary binary format to keep the data.

The upcoming version (1.35) will be on the Mac App Store in few days and it will use SF8 for analyzing.

Chess Insight looks great. What a pity that it's not available on the German App Store!

Chess Insight will come back as soon as possible the previous version 1.42 had an issue could lead to potential data corruption and data loss to prevent that I removed the software temporary from the store. The new version 1.43 in Apple review last 4 days, hopefully quite soon it will be back.