I built a free tool to read chess PDFs and replay the moves on a board
Hello everyone!
I’ve been working on a small project for chess players who like studying from books in PDF format, and I’d like to share it with you.
ChessTools lets you open a chess book PDF in your browser and replay the moves on an interactive chessboard at the same time.
The idea is simple: instead of switching constantly between your PDF reader and a chessboard, you can have both on the same screen.
What it can do
Study
- Split-screen interface: your PDF on the left and the chessboard on the right.
- PDFs are processed without being saved by the website.
- Replay games and variations directly on the board.
- Download games in PGN format.
- Built-in Stockfish analysis.
- Supports variations, comments and Informator-style symbols.
- Create a position with the visual board editor and start analyzing from there.
- Copy a FEN from Chess.com or Lichess and paste it into ChessTools for analysis.
- Save the current board position as an image.
FEN to PNG
There is also a simple FEN-to-image converter that lets you paste a FEN position and generate a downloadable chessboard image.
Everything is free to use.
I built this mainly for my own chess study, but I thought other players might find it useful as well.
If you try it, I'd really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or bug reports.
Website: https://www.chesstools.top/
Thanks for taking a look, and good luck with your chess! ♟️