WALRUS WEIQI

home → minifox foxwq-gym foxwq-api yikewq datasets donate contact

minifox (or minifoxwq) is a third-party unofficial client for the Fox Go Server.

§ Features

It's the successor of openfoxwq, developed as a continuation of the effort to provide a usable client on Linux and OSX platforms. It supports features such as:

observing broadcast games, including FineArt analysis when provided by the broadcaster
playing games using automatch: 9x9, 13x13 and 19x19 are supported
playing games against specific users using direct invites (the so-called "multi-terminal invite")
chat
accessing your game records and also other players'
FineArt AI analysis
tsumego battles and library of solved/failed problems

among others.

minifox is developed on a best-effort basis by reverse-engineering foxwq's proprietary protocol. This is against their Terms of Service and as such, I cannot provide any guarantee about stability of the application or promises about your account not getting banned for using it. For what is worth, many people have been using openfoxwq and later minifox without running into issues for more than a year. I also reached out to foxwq, in order to try to secure an authorization from them to use their protocol, but unfortunately they did not agree nor they seemed interested in the prospects of third-party clients. Use at your own risk.

§ Download

§ Screenshots

§ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What happened to openfoxwq browser application?

A: I won't develop it further. Instead, I will focus on minifoxwq. The site was up until around new year (2024), after which it was taken down. If you enjoyed openfoxwq, you will probably like minifoxwq. You can read a bit more about the rationale here.

Q: Why is minifoxwq not open-source?

A: The source code contains details about the protocol which I'm afraid could be used by some malicious parties to do more than a simple third-party client for compatibility purposes. Thus, since the goal is provide a viable alternative for those who want to play on Fox and do not have a Windows system, I decided to keep it closed-source for the time being and distribute it as shareware. Additionally, note that since the client is built by reverse engineering the protocol, this is against their ToS and I would prefer to minimize the risk of them taking legal action against me.

Q: Will my account get banned if I use minifoxwq?

A: Possibly. However, I'm not aware of anyone's account being banned during the lifetime of the client (almost a year now) and I doubt they will take any action unless the accounts are used for explicit malicious purposes rather than just interacting regularly with their servers.

Q: Is the score-estimator supported?

A: Yes, since version v0.10.