How to improve in chess

Since this is the answer that is asked again and again and again in this forum, I'm making a standard answer to this:

1. Always make sure the game is fun for you.

2. Train your pattern recognition and board awareness with doing chess puzzles daily. Sites like lichess and chesspuzzles offer unlimited puzzles, you can train on them all day if you want.

But pick a time frame you can motivate yourself longterm to play, like a quarter hour, and train that daily.

I also recomment to get the chess interface Lucas Chess R and solve the mate in one and mate in two (and if you want, more) problems there, for a good initial basis for pattern recognition. It also offers various other training options, like simply memorizing a position, endgames, etc.

3. For actually improving your chess skill, prefer slower time controls, like Rapid 15|10. This way you can really think about what move to make next. And with an increment one can have meaningful endgames, too.

4. Review all your games, but especially the losses. Find out what your errors are. Do you not develop your pieces ? Do you not keep your pieces defended ? Do you miss forced mate ? Etc.

5. Learn endgame theory. For the start the basics should suffice. Know how to convert a pawn into a queen when you have nothing else and the opponent is all out, and know how to try to stop the opponent doing just that if you're on the other side. Know about the various types of pawns, such as passed pawns. Know how to checkmate with nothing left but a queen, or a rook, or two bishops. Bishop and knight is also possible but already really hard to do. Etc.

6. In regard to openings, for the start its sufficient to follow the general principles. Especially develop your pieces, control the center, bring your king to safety by castling to the save side. Try to open files, that means trade some pawns for their opponents, so there are no pawns on that file. Open positions are easier to play for beginners.

Once you hit rating ~1000, you may want to start learning actual openings and their main lines and what plans they develop into.

I personally avoid trick openings unless they are also solid, but YMMV.

7. You can learn a lot from watching the Speedruns by GM Naroditsky on YouTube. He goes through all levels of opponents and so he starts slow and gets more and more complex, until he is near GM level and juggles different plans. You can find tons of good material on other channels, too, but GM Naroditsky's content is very condensed. IM Eric Rosen also has started a beautiful speedrun recently.

8. Dont waste too much time on playing computers. Its not the same as playing humans, and doesnt help you train as much as playing humans.

9. Do not care about ratings, especially not chess.com ratings. They can jump all over the place. Unless you are a professional, ratings only serve to give you appropiate opponents that can still challenge you.

One final note, if you want to make a career out of chess, be aware you basically have to be single digit age when you start, and you will need to really train hard, too, even crucially during your twenties, when many people fizzle out. Only a select few will reach IM or GM or even the rare Super - GM (Fide Elo 2700+) status. Though I dont know, maybe the internet will make this much easier in future.