Opening a PGN File

The PGN file type is primarily associated with Chess.

PGN	File extension: PGN
	File type:	chess match

What is a PGN file?

PGN files mostly belong to Chess by Apple. A PGN file contains a record of all the moves in a chess match. The contents of this file are saved in text format using Portable Game Notation. Chess game viewers such as ChessBase Reader, ChessMaster, and the Chess application on macOS may be used to view a chess match saved in a PGN file.

How to open a PGN file

You need a suitable software like Chess to open a PGN file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your PGN file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a PGN file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online PGN Text Viewer

Choose your .pgn file to view

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

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How to extract texts from PGN files or capture a screenshot to PDF, JPG, DOCX, TXT, ...

1. Just click the "Choose your .pgn file to view" button on this page.
2. After your file is opened in browser,
3. click "Save as..." in the menu.
4. Then choose the file format (e.g. JPG, PDF, DOCX, TXT, ...) you want.
5. Your file will be converted and downloaded.

PGN file format:

To find out what program is needed to open PGN files, you need to determine the file format. Each file format has a unique extension and almost always a unique signature. For example, Microsoft Word documents have the extension .docx and the signature (usually the first 3 characters in this file) PK. However, different programs can use the same file extension. Furthermore, a file extension can be renamed incorrectly and double-clicking on it will then display an error when it is opened. So you need a detailed analysis of a file to find out the format and the associated program. Below you will find our evaluation of the PGN files:

The PGN extension is quite commonly used. The file itself is primarily used by a single program. The two most common formats are as follows:

• 80% of all PGN files are Portable Gaming Notation files. The contents of these files can even be read by a human. The files are often between 440 bytes and 39 KB in size. The file type is old but is used even today. The files contain the following words: Black, White, Date, [Round "?"], [Site "Chess.com"], WhiteElo, [Event "Live, [Result "1-0"], BlackElo, TimeControl and [Result "0-1"]. These files are often associated with music, lichess, guest, chess, games, anonymous, data, game and study.
• 8% of all PGN files are using the well-known UTF-8 file format to store the data. UTF-8 is the World Wide Web's most common character encoding for Unicode. UTF-8 files can be viewed with any text editor. These files start with the 3 bytes  (hex: EF BB BF), the so called byte order mark (BOM). These files are text files, so they contain words and text. A typical file size is 2 KB. Certain words are almost always found in the files, such as Date, Event, Black, White, Annotator, ECO, [Round "?"], [Site "?"], PlyCount, [Result "*"] and [Result "1-0"]. A usual file name is e4NYStyle.pgn. Such PGN files store data about play.

All other PGN files (12%) have no consistent format, frequently e.g. config. They are often associated with computer, master, tournament, atakzodsl, predathor, stockfish, kasparov, carlsen or level. Just click the "Choose your .pgn file to view" button on this page to find out what your PGN file is.