macOS Sequoia could soon spark your pawn addiction with its rebooted Chess game

Checkmate!

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Mac fans are undoubtedly eagerly awaiting the release ofmacOS Sequoia, and looking forward to exploring its new features, includingApple Intelligence,iPhone Mirroring, and a whole load of other goodies, but an unsung upgrade has also been spotted – an update to Chess for macOS.

According to a report from9to5Mac, the stock Chess game within the developer build of macOS Sequoia has received quite a facelift, with new modern graphics, a fresh background, and more realistic textures for the pieces.

You can also change the style of the pieces and choose between wood, marble, or metal if you fancy spicing things up further.

You may be wondering why it’s such a big deal to have updated visuals for Chess, but you might be surprised to learn that the game hasn’t been updated since 2012. So, it’s been a long wait, but at leastApplehas finally turned its attention to the app, and made improvements for those of us who enjoy a cheeky chess game between emails on a slow workday.

All just a waiting game

While the Chess upgrade and other nuggets have been spotted in the developer beta ofmacOS 15, it’s worth noting that if Apple hasn’t explicitly mentioned a particular feature atWWDC 2024or in other related announcements, there’s no guarantee that it’ll show up in Sequoia when it launches later this year.

That’s not to say we don’t expect to see the nice new chessboard and pieces – we just have to bear in mind that anything that’s spotted up until the public release ofmacOS Sequoiahas to be taken with a pinch of salt, and it could even be the case that even more improvements to chess are rolled out.

It’s definitely an exciting time to be a Mac fan, what withrefreshed MacBook Airsstill cooling on the shelves, and awhole new AI-powered macOS operating systemin the pipeline – and for chess fans, this news might be the icing on the cake.

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Muskaan is TechRadar’s UK-based Computing writer. She has always been a passionate writer and has had her creative work published in several literary journals and magazines. Her debut into the writing world was a poem published in The Times of Zambia, on the subject of sunflowers and the insignificance of human existence in comparison.

Growing up in Zambia, Muskaan was fascinated with technology, especially computers, and she’s joined TechRadar to write about the latest GPUs, laptops and recently anything AI related. If you’ve got questions, moral concerns or just an interest in anything ChatGPT or general AI, you’re in the right place.

Muskaan also somehow managed to install a game on her work MacBook’s Touch Bar, without the IT department finding out (yet).

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