scidCommunity Help: Quick Guide to using scidCommunity

# Quick Guide to using scidCommunity

scidCommunity is a chess database application; with it you can browse databases of chess games, edit games and search for games by various criteria.

scidCommunity uses its own special three-file database format which is very compact and fast, but it can convert to and from the standard PGN (Portable Game Notation) format. scidCommunity's PGN window displays the text of the current game in PGN format.

You can use scidCommunity to add chess games to a database, using the keyboard or mouse to enter moves. See the help page on entering chess moves for more details.

You can also use scidCommunity as a PGN file browser, by pasting PGN text into scidCommunity's Import window or by opening a PGN file in scidCommunity. However, PGN files cannot be edited by scidCommunity (it opens them read-only) and they use more memory and are slower to load, so for large PGN files it is recommended that you create a scidCommunity database from them first with the pgnscid utility.

The main window of scidCommunity (with the graphical chess board) shows details of the active game and database. At any time, you can have up to four databases open (five including the clipbase), and each will have its own active game. (A game numbered 0 indicates a scratch game that is not part of the actual database). You can switch between the open databases with the File menu.

For more information, please read the other help pages listed in the Help Index.

See the contact information page if you need to contact the author of scidCommunity.

(Updated: scidCommunity, February 2026)