Guides
How to organize a multi-monitor trading setup on Windows
A trading desk lives and dies by its layout. Charts, order entry, watchlists, news and chat each need a fixed place, so your eyes find them without thinking. Trading platforms open dozens of detached windows, and one platform restart, Windows update or monitor glitch scatters them across the screens. This guide shows how to plan a desk of four to six monitors, place every window precisely and get the whole layout back in seconds.
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Plan the screens around what you watch
Put order entry and your main chart on the center screen at eye level, with the main display flag on it so dialogs and alerts appear in front of you. Use the screens beside it for secondary charts and watchlists, a top row for slower dashboards and news, and a portrait monitor for time and sales or chat. Identical monitors with the same resolution and scaling make windows interchangeable between screens. Check that your graphics card or cards can drive every screen at its native resolution.
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Line up monitors and the cursor
With six screens, the cursor's path matters. In Settings, System, Display, arrange the monitors exactly as they sit and align their edges. In WindowLayout's Mouse page, turn on Smooth monitor edges so the pointer does not catch at corners between screens of different sizes, and Cursor wrap if you want it to jump from the last screen to the first. Ctrl+Alt+M moves the cursor straight to the next monitor, and Ctrl+Alt+I flashes each screen's number when you are setting up.
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Split chart screens into zones
Trading layouts are grids. In Windows & Zones, set a 2 × 2 grid on chart monitors to fit four charts per screen, Halves for two larger charts, Three rows on a portrait screen and Priority 25/50/25 on an ultrawide. Click Arrange windows now to drop the open windows into the zones of a monitor. Ctrl+Alt+PageDown and PageUp move the active chart to the next or previous zone and on across monitors, and Gap between snapped windows keeps borders visible.
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Save the whole desk as a window profile
Open Window Profiles and click Save current. A profile holds up to 32 monitors and 500 windows, with each window's position, size and stacking order. Trading platforms often give many windows the same title, or titles that change with the symbol; set the title rule to Contains or Regex for those entries so a chart is matched by the part of its title that stays the same. Several windows of the same app are paired one to one, so ten charts go back to ten different places.
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Recover fast after a restart
After a platform restart, the windows come back in default places. Give the profile a Hotkey in Profile options and press it once the platform has opened its windows; Preview restore shows what will move before you commit. Switch on Restore windows after monitor changes, sleep and unlock so a monitor waking late does not leave charts stacked on one screen, and use Undo last restore if a restore catches you mid-trade.
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Reduce eye strain over long sessions
Long sessions in front of six bright screens are tiring. On the Brightness page, set a Brightness schedule that lowers the backlight of DDC/CI monitors in the evening. Focus fade (Ctrl+Alt+F) dims every monitor except the one you are working on, and Software dimming takes the glare off dashboards you only glance at. Before a long break, Blackout this monitor covers screens you do not need with black.
Frequently asked questions
Can WindowLayout restore windows of a platform that is not running?
Only if you allow it. Tick Launch if not running for the entry, approve the program with Allow launch…, and use Restore & launch missing. Hotkeys and automatic restores never launch programs.
How many monitors does WindowLayout support?
As many as Windows exposes. A single window profile stores up to 32 monitors and 500 windows.
My platform's windows all have the same title. Will they be mixed up?
Each saved entry is matched to one window, by title rule first, then by the monitor it was on and stacking order. Windows with identical titles still go back to distinct places.