Find your way around

The app is four tabs and a settings screen. This page says what each of them is for, so the rest of the manual can get on with the work.

Sign in, or look first

The first screen offers three ways in:

• Sign in with email — your address and password. Remember me keeps you signed in on this device. On Windows it also keeps your password, in Windows Credential Manager, so signing in again needs no typing. With several accounts, the arrow in the address field lists them, and × beside one forgets it. On a phone, the phone's own password manager offers to save the password instead. The eye in the password field — Show password — shows what you typed; a saved password is not shown.
• Sign in / Register with Google — no separate password.
• Continue as Guest — straight in, without an account.

Registering with an address instead uses Register with email, and the app may ask for a code it has mailed you: Email Verification, Enter Verification Code, then Confirm Verification. Back to sign in returns to the first screen.

To take a saved password back, Settings has Saved sign-in on this computer with Forget. The entry is also yours to see and remove in Windows itself: Control Panel → Credential Manager → Windows Credentials, under Mislisha/ and your address.

What a guest cannot do: start or join a session, and save analysis. The app does not refuse at the end of the job — it takes you to the sign-in screen and, once you are in, carries on with what you were doing.

Your age

Once, before anything else, the app asks Your age: I am 18 or older or I am 13 to 17. Nothing else — no year, no date — and Save puts the answer away. Sign out is there for anyone who would rather not answer.

Mislisha is for players of thirteen and over. If you are under eighteen, a trainer's invitation takes effect only once a parent has confirmed it: the parent gets a link by mail, and until they answer the connection waits. Only an account that is eighteen or older can record its voice.

The four tabs

Down the left on a wide window, along the bottom on a narrow one. The first time you open a tab it explains itself in one sentence at the top; Got it puts that card away, and it does not come back on this device.

Home — what is for you now

Home is built from what the data says, and a block is drawn only when it has rows. In order: Resume for your active session or analysis, To review for homework submitted by your students, Set for me for assignments set by your trainer, In a session now when one of your trainers is in a session you can join, and Recordings for your recent recordings. If you teach, Home also keeps First steps as a trainer: four steps — connect a student, write a tutorial, send it, hold a session — ticked from what your account has actually done, each untried one with a button to the place it happens. It stays until all four are done; Not teaching? Hide puts it away.

Practise — practice on your own

The practice hub: your own games and the mistakes in them, an opening repertoire, tactics, mates in one to three, endgames, basic checkmates and winning positions to convert. Nothing here needs another person.

Analyse — the board itself

The board is the tab itself, with engine evaluation, opening database and variation tree. Its bar puts a position on the board, sets the engine to work on it and keeps the result: Board, Review, Save as… and Tutorial.

Teach — tutorials, sessions and your library

Tutorials for writing and importing tutorials, Preparation for your own board alone with your material, New session to open a room for a student, Scan a book to read diagrams out of a chess PDF, Students for your students, groups, requests and student progress, and the Library of everything you keep.

The top bar

• The bell opens Notifications and Invitations: requests to teach or be taught, and invitations to a session, each with Accept and Decline.
• The gear opens Settings. On a wide window it is at the foot of the left-hand strip.
• The question mark — User manual — opens the page of this manual for the screen you are on. On screens whose bar is words rather than icons it is the last row of the More menu, and on a narrow window it is the last row of the Board view menu.
• A session you walked away from keeps a band across the top with its code in it, and Resume session takes you back to the board.

What is in Settings

The screen is called App Settings. At the top is who is signed in, with Sign out — or, for a guest, Sign in. Below it are six sections; on a computer they stand side by side, as many as the window has room for, and on a phone one under another, in this order:

• Account — the account's statistics, Usage this month (what the account has used since the first of the month, and where its plan draws the line), Age, Parent email where one is needed, on Windows Saved sign-in on this computer, and last Delete account. That one removes the account and everything in it — tutorials and their videos, recordings and their sound, exercises, games, homework and progress, and what was sent to other users — and it cannot be undone. It asks for your password first, or, for an account that signs in with Google, for the word DELETE.
• Appearance — light or dark, the board's colours and the piece set.
• Board and engine — Board coordinates, how fast a piece moves, and Configure local engine for Stockfish.
• The voice. Speak messages turns reading aloud on, and Test plays a sentence. The voice ships with the app, so there is nothing to install and no language to choose.
• Help — User manual, this manual, and Keyboard shortcuts.
• About — Chess engine says whose the engine is, under which licence it comes, and where its source code is; Open-source licences lists the licences of everything the app is built with.

Keys

On a computer, F1 opens the whole list of shortcuts; Ctrl+, opens Settings, and Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+4 go to the four tabs. Wherever a row of moves sits under a board, the arrow keys walk it. No shortcut is the only way to do anything.

If something is not where this page says

• Nothing is read aloud — check Speak messages, and the speaker on the panel itself, which turns reading on where you are.
• A button asks you to sign in — you are in as a guest.