Chess Shorts

Why this exists

Chess creators spend more time turning a game into a watchable clip than they do playing it — screen-recording an analysis board, cropping to vertical, adding an eval bar, trimming the slow bits. Chess Shorts does the whole job from a single link or PGN. Paste a game, watch the preview, export. That’s it.

It is a focused tool, not another chess app. It doesn’t host games, run a server, or ask you to sign in. It takes a game you already have and makes a good video out of it.

What it does

• Import from a link or PGN

  Paste a Lichess or Chess.com game link and Chess Shorts fetches the moves for you, or paste a full PGN directly. It recognises the players, event, round and ratings automatically.

• On-device evaluation

  A strong chess engine runs on your iPhone to evaluate every position, driving the evaluation bar and the pacing. Nothing is sent to a server to be analysed.

• Smart pacing

  Routine opening moves play quickly; captures, checks, sacrifices, big swings and checkmate slow down, so the important moments land. Choose Relaxed, Normal or Snappy.

• Clean, animated board

  Smooth piece animation, last-move highlighting, a check indicator, player names and ratings, the move being played, and a final result card — rendered at 1080×1920 for vertical platforms.

• Board themes

  Green, Ocean, Walnut, Slate, Rosewood and Midnight board colour schemes, applied to the preview and the exported video.

• Preview before you export

  Play the game through in the app, step move-by-move, scrub to any point, and adjust the speed — all before you commit to a render.

• Save straight to Photos

  Finished videos save to your camera roll, ready to upload to YouTube, TikTok or Instagram — which all post from Photos — or share directly.

• Private by design

  Analysis and rendering happen on your device. The only network requests are to Lichess or Chess.com to fetch a game you paste a link for, and to Apple for purchases. No accounts, no analytics, no tracking.

Free, with a one-time unlock

Chess Shorts is free to download and includes a few complete videos so you can try it properly. Free videos carry a small “Chess Shorts” watermark. Chess Shorts Pro is a one-time £9.99 in-app purchase that removes the watermark, lifts the video limit, and unlocks every board theme. There is no subscription. If you get a new iPhone or reinstall, tap “Restore purchase” to recover Pro at no charge.

Privacy

Your games are analysed and rendered on your iPhone. Chess Shorts does not transmit personal data to Whiteforge or any third party. It connects to Lichess and Chess.com only to fetch the moves of a public game when you paste its link, and to Apple’s App Store for purchases. Photos access is used only to save the videos you make. See the full privacy policy for detail.

Support

For help importing games, exporting, the free limit and Pro, and bug reports, see the support page. For anything else, email support@whiteforgetech.co.uk.