lichess refined

I made a browser extension to clean up and improve the lichess.org homepage. The project code is public on GitHub and is available as a Firefox Extension. It does the following:

Removes non-critical sections
- Now that I know what lichess has to offer, I don't need to see tournaments, leaderboards, blog posts, and a live game every time I want to play
Cleans up styling
- More focus on finding games (and no more random orange highlights!)
Adds display for ratings in bullet, blitz, rapid and classical, including current win and play streak
- The homepage is opened every time a user searches for a game (including between games) so this helps me know when to stop, and lets me check in on my rating easily
Adds puzzle rating alongside daily puzzle
- Completely unobtrusive but helpful
Shows user flair as display picture
- Lichess's flair feature isn't super popular right now, but I think it's a lot of fun (and anything is better than the currently un-customizable default profile icon)

These are fairly small changes, but the result is cleaner, more informative, more compact, and less distracting than the current homepage. An ideal version of this extension would allow customization of the layout and maybe expand to other pages on the website, but realistically I think I'll be the only user and I don't really need any of that. There is still room for improvement in the UI, but one of my goals was to change as little as possible, and where it is now is good enough for me.

Lichess Refined also works great on Orion, even on iOS!

lichess.org with the lichess refined extension on an iphone

The icon is the lichess logo with a couple of stars drawn over it in LibreSprite.

The name comes from the popular extensions Refined GitHub and Refined Hacker News. I put the refined after cause I like the way it sounds better that way. And I abbreviate it as LiRe in my head which I like better than ReLi.

I haven't submitted to the Chrome web store because I don't want to pay the $5 registration fee. If you'd like to see Lichess Refined on Chrome, let me know. Also please contact me if you have any issues with using it or suggestions for improvement.

Posted: 2024-09-15