scidCommunity

scidCommunity is a powerful chess analysis and database program. Originally derived from Scid (Shane's Chess Information Database), it has evolved into a distinct tool with numerous enhancements and a growing community of over 3,500 users around the world.

While it maintains compatibility with the original Scid database formats, scidCommunity focuses on modern features like integrations with Lichess and Chess.com, user-requested improvements, and a streamlined experience for analysis and database management. scidCommunity is free software and is released under the GPL licence.

Key Enhancements & Features

Most recent changes:

1. New feature added under the Play menu that integrates playing on the Lechenicher SchachServer (LSS) and on the ICCF server.
2. Based on a user request, NAG annotations present in your database can be shown in the Tree View if you click the "Annotations" check box.
3. Drag and drop of database, PGN, and .epd files is now available. Drag files to either the Board display window or the PGN Window.

Show 28 more (older changes) — click to expand

4. A long list of chess engines provided by Lucas Chess can now be installed with a button click in the Tools/Configure Engines window by pressing the new "Lucas Chess" button.
5. Based on a user request, a dedicated .epd analysis window is now available (and opens automatically when you open an .epd file).
6. Based on a user request, it is now possible to open an arbitrarily large number of Analysis Windows by double clicking the engines in the Configure Engines or Analysis Window.. pop up dialogs.
7. Daily chess puzzle and more puzzles from Lichess with the new Lichess Puzzles feature under the Play menu.
8. New engine vs. engine tournament feature and PGN Viewer adopted from Uwe Klimmek
9. Thanks to a user suggestion, a new Lichess OpenExplorer button has been added to the PGN Window that provides access to the Lichess Opening Explorer data from the Masters, Lichess, and Player databases.
10. For games with [%clk ] time comments, a new Tools/Time Analysis feature charts clock time remaining and time used per move.
11. Lichess-based calculation of White and Black's "Game Accuracy" included in the upper left of the engine score graph in the Engine Window.
12. Thanks to a well thought out and detailed user proposal, developers can now access Scid databases directly in their code using scidCommunity's new headless API. More documentation can be found in the /docs folder.
13. Users can now see up to 4 half-move sequences in the Tree Window The user's preferred Tree Window move depth can be saved under Options/Preferences/Moves
14. Updated language translations in Options/Language and added Chinese, Turkish, Serbian Cyrillic, Japanese and Romanian translation files.
15. Based on user request, now down-arrow enters a variation in the PGN Window, up-arrow returns to main line. Right-arrow moves forward in both main line and variation.
16. Based on user request, adopted Lichess/ChessBase format for arrows and symbols as the default. User can revert to old Scid format in Options/Preferences/Moves if they want.
17. Add multi-colored arrows for engine analysis in Engine and Analysis windows. Top 3+ engine moves with color-coded arrows: green (Best), yellow (2nd), red (3rd+)
18. Add 2 fold and 3 fold repetition detection to the PGN Window (including when new moves are added).
19. Eliminated the dependence on the old Phalanx/Toga engines formerly needed to use the "Play/Tactical Game" feature.
20. Improved "Best Games" button in the Tree View to honor the state of the all_games checkbox
21. Connected the new Lichess 7-man table base lookup to the Finish Game feature in the Analysis Engine window so auto-play doesn't go on longer than necessary. Also Finish Game now allows simultaneous time and depth limits on the engines used.
22. Implemented user request to allow opening Lichess broadcast tournament games. If a game is ongoing, it will be updated every minute.
23. Based on user request, user can now limit the length of variations in the Analysis Engine annotation function.
24. Implemented user request to allow users to easily import their Lichess and chess.com games.
25. Implemented user request for better handling of long comments in the Game Info window.
26. New light colored buttons added for use in the Engine and Analysis windows when using "dark" and "cobalt2" themes.
27. New (optional) "Sand" and "cobalt2" themes. Additionally, 13 polished TTK themes (6 dark, 7 light) with custom widget styling by Uwe Klimmek are bundled, along with matching dark toolbar icons.
28. New buttons in the PGN Window:
    • Table Base looks up current position in the Lichess endgame table base
    • chess.com uploads the current game to Chess.com
    • lichess.org uploads the current game to Lichess.org
    • chessdb Engine Tree opens the current position in chessdb.cn's tree of engine evaluaitons
    • Lichess Eval gets any engine evaluations stored on Lichess for the current position (see the Lichess API for more detail)
    • Lichess OpenExplore retrieves data from Lichess's Opening Explorer for the current position
29. A new Download TWIC Games option under the Tools menu that downloads' the most recent weekly games from TWIC and brings them into scidCommunity for filtering, merging with your database etc.
30. The Engine windows have been enhanced:
    • New depth and move time input windows for limiting an engine's calculations. If users choose to use Scid's Save Options, the inputs will be saved as the defaults for future use.
    • Thanks to a user suggestion, the Engine Window upper panel now pre-populates with stored evaluations from Lichess if they are available and it caches local engine results if they get to a deeper level than the pre-populated PVs.
    • New Auto Comment button attempts to inject a meaningful comment for the current move from AI, while Game Comment button will provide comments for moves that have annotations and a game summary.
31. The Header Search dialogue has been improved with the addition of a new "Layouts" button at the lower left. This button replaces a "Save" button that has been disabled for years. The new button allows users to name, save and load sets of search parameters they use frequently.
    • The hotkey Alt + s has been added to invoke the Search button.
    • An "Invert Search" button has been added that allows you to filter OUT all games that DO meet the criteria entered (see more here).

Users with suggestions for further enhancements are welcome to write something in the Discussion section or submit a pull request. Enjoy!

📸 scidCommunity in Action

New "Layouts" Button	Engine Depth/Time Inputs
TWIC PGN Import	Lichess & Chess.com Buttons
Table Base Lookup	Direct Game Download
Lichess Broadcasts	Move Sequences In Tree Window

|

💽 Releases

Check latest Releases for a deb, rpm, a Windows exe, a MacOS and AppImage installable package. The deb has been tested against Ubuntu 24, the rpm against Fedora Rawhide, the AppImage against Fedora Kinoite (Rawhide) and the exe file against a Windows 11 virtual machine. The Mac version appears to be blocked by Apple's security protocols. However if you build it yourself on a Mac (see below), you can run it by invoking it from the terminal.

Linux users can install scidCommunity from Flathub, however the Flathub update process is slower. The Flatpak is installed with limited access to your file system. You will probably want to grant it access to your home directories for storing preferences and accessing your stored database. You can do that with the Flatseal flatpak, or with the terminal command flatpak override --user io.github.whelanh.scidCommunity --filesystem=home or flatpak override --user io.github.whelanh.scidcommunity --filesystem=/path/to/directory

For the most recent developments, see the Releases section or:

• For rpm based Linux systems, ScidCommunity is also available through the Fedora Copr Repo
• For Arch-based systems, it is available on the AUR
• scidCommunity is also available from the Snap Store. See the section below if you are an Ubuntu or Kubuntu user.

Windows Users are advised to use the "setup.exe" in the Releases section. You may need to use a browser other than Edge (e.g., Chrome or Firefox) to succesfully download the .exe file.

Ubuntu/Kubuntu Users If you try and install the .deb pacakage from Releases using the Kubuntu App Center (Discover) or Ubuntu App Center, recent Ubuntu/Kubuntu versions frequently intercepts local .deb files, searches its store, and installs the sandboxed Snap version instead. The Snap version is sandboxed with limited permissions. scidCommunity's file chooser in the Snap version, for example, can't see your home directory unless you run sudo snap connect scidcommunity:home in a terminal. To actually install the .deb file from Releases, open a terminal and run sudo snap remove scidcommunity --purge (if you used the App Center before) and then run sudo apt install ./scidcommunity-5.1.3.97-Linux.deb (using the correct version number) from the directory where you downloaded the .deb file (most likely ~/Downloads).

Building from Source

macOS

The ScidCommunity.app bundle in Releases contains the app and it can be moved to /Applications. You can also create a symbolic link to the executable ScidCommunity.app/Contents/scid/scid. However Apple security protocols may prevent this or make it difficult to do.

You are probably going to have better luck if you build it from source using these commands:

git clone https://github.com/whelanh/scidCommunity.git
cd scidCommunity
./build_app.sh
make install

You can then invoke it from the scidCommunity folder using the terminal command ./scidCommunity You may need to run ./build_app.sh several times for Apple to download the needed tcl/tk libraries.

Linux

Requires: tcl8.6-dev, tk8.6-dev (or equivalent for your distribution). It will now compile against tk and tcl 9.0 libraries (e.g. Fedora Rawhide tcl-devel and tk-devel).

Sound Support: scidCommunity uses a multi-backend audio system that attempts to find the best available player on your system.

• Linux: Works with pw-play (PipeWire), paplay (PulseAudio), aplay (ALSA), or the tcl-snack package.
• Windows: Uses powershell or the included scidsnd.exe.
• macOS: Uses afplay.

git clone https://github.com/whelanh/scidCommunity.git
cd scidCommunity
./configure
make
sudo make install

CMake Build

git clone https://github.com/whelanh/scidCommunity.git
cd scidCommunity
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install