What Chess GUI / Interface you like to use and why?

I read a lot of topics about chess engines.
Ever when people discuss a particular chess software it often is only about the engine and not about the interface.
I personally think that the interface is a very important part because you have to work with it and look at it all the time.

So my question:
If you don't mind the cost of the chess software, which Interface would you prefer and why?

Why don't you tell us what we can get when money is no object?

When I need to analyze a position, after a game, Arena running Stockfish does fine.  The new post-game analysis in V3 is useful for blunder checking.

I rarely play a game against an engine and I don't enjoy setting up engine versus engine tournaments. I don't need GUI's to emulate real people.  I prefer playing real people. 

// So if money were no object, would you buy a membership here?

Arena seems to have an issue where it crashes too much for me.   Ive been looking for something more stable.   As noted, most folks don't play the engines, they use it for analysis, and the looks of a generic board (much like cdc's boards) is fine.   Ive not paid in a while but I think fritz is still popular for bought tools. 

I don't think Arena does that; It can only show attacked pieces. I believe Fritz, and maybe Chessbase, does let you draw arrows and highlight squares with red, green, and yellow? (I don't remember the colors for sure.)

Lucas chess is the if you want to play against an engine by far. It works really well for analysis too. You can try Arena too, it's light-weight and really good.

Lucas chess - https://www-lucaschess.rhcloud.com/

Arena - http://www.playwitharena.com/

Have you heard of BabasChess? It's a good interface for anaysis too.

P.S It's actually a client, but it has an analysis option which is really good.

What about MACs?  What do you people suggest?

HIARCS for MACs seems best.

Thanks, I will take a look at it. 

Aquarium 2015 + Fritz 15.

Aquarium is good for:

• remembering multiple locations at multiple databases at same time - like this I can train with tactical/endgame databases and switch between topics without loosing where I was
• guess the move mode for studying master games

Fritz is good for:

• reading Chessbase books
• calculation training mode when you play for both sides but position on board is not changing - good for calculation and visualisation training. At the end an engine will compare your moves to best moves and give a score.

Standard features (like sparring against an engine, game analysis) are equally good in both.

I also use Aquarium but 2016 and use it mostly for analysing using Houdini 4, fritz 15 and rybka deep....engines.... use Fritz or chessbase 13 for everything else.....

ChessX for the Mac is a very good png based database program and is free. A new official release should be available in the next week or so at http://chessx.sourceforge.net/?q=node/12.

Meanwhile I have posted a recent developer build at: https://www.box.com/chessx. It is very similar to Hiarcs. You may find it better.

I bought myself Fritz 15 for Christmas, but imo it's heavily overengineerd and doesn't feel stable. I mean it doesn't crash or anything, it just doesn't feel rock solid. The screen flickers when you go in a different mode, the pieces glitch when you move them and sometimes the engine wont load. And no, it's not my laptop. So instead I bought an activation key for my Shredder Classic demo, that I had been using prior to getting Fritz 15 and installed all my engines including Fritz 15 into that. So all in all i've used the famous Fritz GUI for about 6 weeks. I think the Shredder GUI is highly underappreciated. It's simple, clean and doesn't need ribbons, because when everything is displayed it has about  14 buttons max. The only thing I miss with Shredder is the option to search the position on the board in the database. But other than that I'd say Shredder is the iphone among chess GUI's. Not overly complicated just for the sake of being overly complicated because it looks so "professional". See I don't like to read manuals, I think they are a waste of time. If I can't figure something out in less than 2 minutes and being guided in the right direction with window dialogs, well then the product is a fail. This is 2017, my phone is a much more complicated device than any  chess gui, yet it's fully idiot proof. You can pick one up and learn to use it on the fly. Steve Jobs would have fired those two coders over at chessbase... TWICE!!! So I have some advice for the folks at Chessbase. Get dictionary --> look up 4 words --> 1. user 2. friendly 3. intuitive 4. design

Chessbase online for Android

HIARCS Chess Explorer for Windows

Perfect Chess Trainer is very nice

Lucas Chess also good.

Acid Ape Chess on the Android is lovely

Stockfish engine is free and right now is also strongest.  ChessX is a great GUI png viewer and is free also. You couldn't do much better even if you paid a lot.

I wonder if you guys still remember one interface called CHESSMACHINE that could be used on Freechess... It was very very cool but I don´t know where to find it anymore. I loved it because it was very appealing and customizable.

I remember the style, the physical boards with a dedicated computer...
is it in here?  Its hard to tell at a glance.. apparently the name was used for more than one thing over the years https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-wonderful-world-of-chess-machine-emulators

https://www.chess.com/blog/ChessBooster/my-choice-chess-king

i like this one, not too much excessive ribbons, menus...