To move a piece, you can drag it with the left mouse button, or you can click the left mouse button once on the piece, then once more on the destination square. To drop a new piece on a square (when applicable), press the middle or the right mouse button over the square and select from the pop-up menu. In cases where you can drop either a white or black piece, use the middle button (or shift+right) for white and the right button (or shift+middle) for black. When you are playing a bughouse game on an Internet Chess Server, a list of the off-board pieces that each player has available is shown in the window title after the player's name; in addition, the piece menus show the number of pieces available of each type. From version 4.3.14 on, it is also possible in crazyhouse, bughouse or shogi to drag and drop pieces to the board from the holdings squares displayed next to the board. This latter method for dropping pieces during a game is preferred, and the piece-drop menu is now deprecated (except for editing a position). Although the old behavior can still be selected through a command-line option, the default function of the right mouse button is to display the position the chess program thinks it will end up in, while moving the mouse vertically with this button pressed will step through the principal variation to show how this position will be reached. Lines of play displayed in the engine-output window an similarly be played out on the board, by right-clicking on them.
When connected to an ICS, it is possible to call up a graphical representation of players seeking a game in stead of the chess board, when the latter is not in use (i.e. when you are not playing or observing). Left-clicking the display area will switch between this 'seek graph' and the chess board. Hovering the mouse pointer over a dot will show the details of the seek ad in the message field above the board. Left-clicking the dot will challenge that player. Right-clicking a dot will 'push it to the back', to reveal any dots that were hidden behind it. Right-clicking off dots will refresh the graph.
Most other XBoard commands are available from the menu bar. The most frequently used commands also have shortcut keys or on-screen buttons. Some rarely used parameters can only be set through options on the command line used to invoke XBoard.
XBoard uses a settings file, in which it can remember any changes to the settings that are made through menus or command-line options, so they will still apply when you restart XBoard for another session. The settings can be saved into this file automatically when XBoard exits, or on explicit request of the user. The default name for the settings file is /etc/xboard/xboard.conf, but in a standard install this file is only used as a master settings file that determines the system-wide default settings, and defers reading and writing of user settings to a user-specific file like ~/.xboardrc in the user's home directory.
When XBoard is iconized, its graphical icon is a white knight if it is White's turn to move, a black knight if it is Black's turn. See Iconize in Keys below if you have problems getting this feature to work.