Nibbler is the most advanced graphical interface for operating the Lc0 chess engine. It is recommended by the developers of this remarkable engine.
Nibbler for Mac icon
Nibbler for Mac and Nibbler for Linux & Windows is a free open source program under the GPL 3 license.
With Nibbler, you can conveniently access all the key parameters of the Lc0 chess engine and maximize its potential and power during play and, above all, for analysis.
Created and developed as a dedicated tool for the Lc0 chess engine, Nibbler offers capabilities not found in other chess GUIs. Only Banksia GUI offers similar functionality, but it is not a tool specialized in cooperation with Lc0.
Recently, Mac users received a beautiful gift of the Lc0 0.29.0 chess engine capable of harnessing the power of modern Macs.
And the result is amazing: the latest Lc0 plays several hundred Elo stronger than its predecessor (measured on a MacBook Pro M1); about 3400 Elo with short time to think (1 minute / game + 0.6 seconds / move) and of course stronger with more time. This is due to the use of the so-called Metal backend, through which Lc0 accesses the most powerful Mac computing accelerators (hardware-accelerated graphics).
Nibbler and Lc0 0.29.0 ready to use the resources of the MacBook Pro M1 using the Metal backend.
Users of older Macs can also use Nibbler and the latest Lc0 but (depending on Mac hardware resources) the Metal backend will not always be available - less Lc0's strength.
Nibbler and Lc0 0.29.0 ready to use the resources of the iMac mid-2014 using the OpenCL backend.
Here's how Nibbler looks during the analysis with Lc0:
Nibbler for Mac offers the same capabilities as its Linux and Windows versions.
Lc0 is a very "sensitive" chess engine in terms of choosing the right version for your computer and the neural network used. A good choice will provide high strength when analyzing and playing chess.
This correlation is the same when Lc0 is used in Linux and Windows environments. My Mac compilations are "universal" and work well with the vast majority of computers. However, if you want to maximize the power of Lc0, then I encourage you to compile this chess engine yourself or (which is also a very good option) download it using the brew package manager. Brew is able to download and install Lc0 in such a version that will efficiently use the resources of your computer.
I wrote about the installation and use of the brew package manager in this article.
Due to the great interest in using the Lc0 engine has the Mac platform, I will probably publish a proper how-to soon.
If you don't want to wait, then...
Feel free to download Nibbler.
Mac Apple Silicon – with latest Lc0 0.29.0 & default net (791556)
Mac Intel – with latest Lc0 0.29.0 & default net (791556)