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SmartGo One gets a major redesign for version 3.0. Last fall, I changed the scrolling lists to adopt the new Liquid Glass look, leaving the game view unchanged. The game view is complex: it contains the board, move tree, player names, comment, score, toolbar buttons, and more. It was not clear to me how to make the game view work with the new design language while giving users access to all the powerful features of SmartGo.
I was lucky to be able to attend a 3-day Liquid Glass workshop at Apple in January. Having Apple designers and developers on hand was super helpful; this workshop got me started on the redesign and pointed in the right direction. It took a few more months to put the deconstructed app back together and get it to a good state. I think the result is worth it: not only does it look better, but it also makes SmartGo easier to understand and use.
Game view
Here are some before/after screenshots so you can judge for yourself. The default game view is now cleaner and simpler. The move tree is no longer shown by default; you can turn it on as needed. (If you don’t like the sepia look: Settings > Appearance > Sepia Background.)
The bigger toolbar buttons in iOS 26 limit the number of controls in the bottom toolbar. SmartGo handles this in several ways:
- Show as needed: For example, the control for going back to the main line only appears when you’re in a variation.
- Scrolling controls: In Markup mode, all the different marks are in a scrolling control.
- User choice: Some toolbars you can turn on and off, e.g. the toolbars for searching within a game and for additional navigation controls (e.g. ±10 moves).
- Overlap: As the controls are translucent, it’s okay if they sometimes overlap the board.
- Top line: Three icons for marking the game (favorite, marked, or checked), plus an icon to view the game as a book.
- Game mode: The main game modes switch between playing against the AI or replaying a game: easy to understand.
- SGF: There are three modes for editing the game, each one providing a different set of tools.
- Pro: Three modes are enabled only when you subscribe to the Pro version: analyze the whole game, guess moves, and joseki matching. Use Guess and Joseki together to train joseki.
- Display: Five buttons show or hide different features or tools: tree view, score graph, comment view, Find toolbar (for searching within games), and Navigation toolbar (±10 moves).
- Tabs: The bottom controls (iPhone only) let you switch directly between tabs without having to go back out to the top level.
- Swipe gesture: The left/right swipe to go to the next/previous problem now also works in games and players.
- Distraction-free reading mode: In book view, tap outside any board to make the controls go away so you can focus on the book.
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Also, the layout is more fluid than in previous versions. The board can now be resized more freely and can extend underneath the controls, giving you the ability to zoom in on a fight while still seeing more of the full-board context. (Use two fingers to zoom and move the board.)
The old Tools popup (now called the Game Menu) went through a huge change. 9 modes and 45 unlabeled icons have been reduced to 8 modes and just 9 unlabeled icons. The old popup worked well for players who were willing to dive deep into the app, but was scary and overwhelming to most everybody else.
Problem view
This redesign carries over to the Problem view.
The previously disjointed color to play and problem text are combined into one unit. (Note that you can reposition that unit left, right, or bottom, if you prefer; just drag it around.) And note how the board is limited in size, instead of always being huge and filling the whole view (Settings > Problems > Limit Stone Size).
The game menu for problems is much simpler, and allows you to smoothly switch between Solve and Replay (this worked in previous versions but was very janky).
iPad layout
Previous versions used three-pane layout on the iPad: a sidebar for switching between tabs, the list view, and the detail view. When the sidebar was visible, it was wasting space; when it was hidden, switching tabs was cumbersome. The new layout just has list and detail view, and uses a familiar control at the top to switch between tabs.
Here’s the expanded view, including extra toolbars for Find and Navigation.
The Mac pretty much uses the iPad layout. Due to the way I use Catalyst to create the Mac version, the top title bar and toolbar are not as integrated as I’d like; I hope macOS 27 will let me improve that.
Hint
Hint is significantly better, showing you the evaluation of multiple moves; scroll to see more moves. The move actually played will have a black or white outline around it; if it’s deemed a mistake, it will be listed first and in red, and show either point loss and/or win rate loss. Tap on a move in the list to see the expected move sequence for that move. You can also tap on the highlighted move on the board to see the sequence; if that doesn’t work with the way you use Hint, you can turn this off in Settings > Move Input > Tap to Show Sequence.
The first item in the list shows the score; you can also turn on winning percentage in Settings > Computer Play > Show Win Rate. You can tap on that score to see the areas of each player.
Note that you can move the Hint analysis above or below the board. Use the controls in Settings > Appearance, or just drag it to the new position.
More changes
And lots of bug fixes and stability improvements along the way. For example, restoring the current position was previously just saving your settings in the current tab; now it preserves your location in all the tabs.
Pricing
I’ve increased the pricing for the pro upgrade to better reflect the value the app is now offering: $30/year (two weeks free trial), $5/month, or $99/lifetime. (If you’re already subscribed to SmartGo, your subscription pricing stays unchanged.) See <https://smartgo.com/features.html> for more info on the Pro features.
Future
This is a big redesign; please let me know where I messed up and made things harder or more confusing rather than easier and more understandable.
Note that version 3.0 requires iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or macOS 26 – keeping everything working on older versions was just not realistic, sorry. If you’re not ready to upgrade, that’s okay: version 2.8.3 should continue to work on your device, and will continue to get the pro game updates (the GoGoD collections is now up to 138,000 games).
It’s just a few weeks until WWDC (Apple’s yearly developer conference) where they’ll announce iOS 27. I expect refinements rather than significant design changes, so hopefully this will be a year I can focus on adding go-related features rather than performing major user interface surgery.
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