Sharing a game into the analyzer
Send a game, a position or a screenshot straight from the app you are already in, without copying and pasting.
Copying a PGN out of one app and pasting it into another is four or five steps, and on a phone it usually involves a long press, a selection handle that grabs the wrong thing, and a trip through the app switcher. Android has a better route built in: the share sheet. Chess Analyzer now appears in it, so a game you are looking at can be handed over directly.
How to use it
Wherever you are — a game page, a chat message, an email, your photo gallery — use that app's Share button and pick Chess Analyzer from the list. The analyzer opens with whatever you sent already loaded.
Three kinds of thing are understood:
| What you share | What happens |
|---|---|
| A PGN — a whole game | Opens the import screen with the game text in place, ready to load |
| A FEN — a single position | Same screen, recognised as a position, with the side to move already selected |
| An image of a board | Goes straight into scanning, so the position is read off the picture |
Sharing a game from Lichess or Chess.com
Both sites offer the PGN as shareable text. On Lichess, open the game and use the share or export menu; on Chess.com, the game review screen has a share option. Choose to share the PGN as text and pick Chess Analyzer. Headers, comments and variations can all be present — the importer keeps the players and the mainline and quietly discards the rest, exactly as it does for a paste.
If an app offers you a link to the game rather than the moves, that link is not a game. Sharing it will land you on the import screen with a URL in the box, which will not load. Look for the option that gives you the PGN itself.
Sharing a position as a FEN
A FEN is one line describing a board, and puzzle sites and chat conversations pass them around constantly. Shared text is checked to see whether it describes a board rather than a game, so you do not have to tell the app which you sent. When the FEN says whose turn it is, that is picked up too — worth a glance before loading, because a position analysed for the wrong side is a different position entirely.
Sharing a screenshot
Share an image and the analyzer tries to read the position off it. This works on screenshots, PDF diagrams and printed pages photographed straight on — anything where the board is square to the frame and the pieces are clear. A photograph of a real board taken at an angle is not supported.
Reading a picture is a Pro feature. If your account does not have it, you will be told so when the image arrives rather than being left wondering why nothing happened.
Where what you share is handled
Shared text is read on your phone. So are shared images: the recognition model is downloaded to the device and runs there, so the picture itself stays on your phone. The exception across the whole app is Cloud Analysis, which is off unless you switch it on, and which sends the positions of the game being analysed to our server while it runs. The privacy policy sets out exactly what that covers.
A few things worth knowing
- It works whether or not the app is already open. Sharing into a closed app starts it; sharing into an open one replaces what you were doing, because a share is a request to look at that position now.
- Nothing loads by itself. Shared text lands in the import box and waits for you to tap Load. Share sheets are easy to hit by accident, and you may want to check the side to move first.
- One item at a time. Selecting several files and sharing them together is not supported; share the one you want.
- Android only. The iOS app does not offer this yet.