Mobile App: Official Release!

One year after the public beta, we're excited to announce the first official release of the new Lichess mobile app!

It is now available for download from the Google Play or from the App Store.

A lot of work has been done in the past year, and the app is now stable and complete enough that we think it can be used by everyone. Not every feature from the website is available yet, but it is an ongoing process!

Achieving this result was made possible thanks to the generous support of Lichess Patrons, and the amazing work of our open-source community.

Many thanks to all GitHub contributors, and in particular to:

• @Pranav for his work on puzzles and analysis board
• @julien for the amazing broadcast feature
• @Tom for the tournaments, studies and many more

And of course, our full time developer @veloce!

We want to additionally thank all the members of the beta testing group and the Discord users who provided the invaluable feedback that contributed greatly in shaping this app.

Why you should switch

The old application is still available and not all features have been ported yet, so you might wonder: "Do I need to switch now?"
The answer is almost certainly yes! There are only a few reasons not to switch:

• If your phone does not support the requirements: Android 8.0+, iOS 13.0+
• If you play a non-standard variant, other than Chess960
• If you want to play offline against the computer

We believe the new app is much better overall. The design is more consistent, with a deliberate choice of minimalism, contrary to the somewhat overloaded design of the old one. You can also customise the home screen layout as you wish.

And, more than anything, you will enjoy a much smoother and responsive experience. This is possible thanks to the open-source framework Flutter. We decided to rewrite the application with this technology, as it provides near-native performance and looks, along with a high quality library of widgets.

What's next

In the next months we'll continue to work on stability and bug fixes. The app is still relatively new and there are a few rough edges to smooth out.

Our other priorities are to add the missing features, such as variants, and to improve the app's accessibility.

We’re also working on offline play against the computer, but it is too early to estimate a release date for this feature.

For a more complete list of issues and features, please refer to the milestones on GitHub.

The main features

• Play chess
  • Play real time or correspondence chess
  • Participate in arena tournaments
  • Receive challenges from friends
• Study and improve
  • Solve chess puzzles from a wide variety of themes, online or offline
  • Race against the clock in Puzzle Storm, or solve as many as you can n a row in Puzzle Streak
  • Analyse your games with Stockfish locally (Stockfish 17.1) or on the server
  • Explore and learn openings with the opening explorer
  • Learn and practice chess with Lichess Studies
  • Create positions to analyse with the board position editor
  • Practice recognising the chessboard coordinates
• Watch top games and keep up with the chess world
  • Watch chess tournament broadcasts
  • Watch Lichess TV and online streamers
• And more...
  • Fully customise your home-screen widgets
  • Use a chess clock for your over-the-board games
  • Many different board themes and piece sets
  • Custom background themes
  • Translated into 55 languages

We hope you enjoy the new app. Please do leave us a review if you can!