The desk does two different jobs, and it is worth naming them separately because the whole design follows from the split.

Scanning is looking at eight names at once and asking which one deserves attention. Working is taking that one name apart. Those want different screens — a scanning chart should be clean enough to read at a glance, and a working chart should have every tool you own on it.

So the desk gives you both: a grid you scan, and a drill-down you expand into. You set the drill-down up once and it works for every name you ever expand.

Up to eight slots, two across. Each one holds a chart, or the options chain, entry signals, Elliott zones, pattern zones or the strategy builder — pick from the dropdown in any slot’s header.

The slot you last clicked is the active one: its header is tinted with a blue bar down the left edge. That matters because the toolbar along the top — timeframe, candles, indicators, drawing tools — drives the active chart, not all of them. Click a header, then use the toolbar.

Click ⤢ in any slot header and that chart fills the window. That much is ordinary. What is not ordinary is that expanded mode is its own small desk.

While expanded, + Window appears in the toolbar. Add up to four windows, and give each one whatever job you want — a second timeframe, the options chain, Elliott zones, the payoff analyzer.

Every window follows the ticker you expanded. That is the part worth slowing down on. The windows do not hold symbols of their own. Expand SOFI and all four show SOFI; go back, expand HOOD, and the same four windows are now showing HOOD. You build the arrangement once and it serves all eight charts in the grid.

Add a moving average while a chart is expanded and there is a fair question: does that belong to this one chart, or to all of them? The desk asks you rather than guessing.

When you leave fullscreen after changing anything, you get three choices:

• All charts in this layout — every chart on the desk gets what you just added. This is the one to use when you decide you want the 50 and 200 day averages on everything.
• This chart only — the change stays where you made it.
• Discard the changes — put the chart back the way it was when you expanded it.

Change nothing and you are not asked — collapsing an untouched chart just collapses it.

Everything on the desk — which slots are open, their tickers, timeframes, studies, the arrangement, and your expanded drill-down — is remembered in two separate places, and the difference matters.

• Your browser keeps the desk in front of you, automatically. Refresh the page, close the tab, come back tomorrow on the same computer — it is all still there. You do not have to save anything for this to work.
• Your account keeps a named layout, and only when you save one. That copy is what follows you to another computer or your phone, and it is what you get back if you load the layout again later.

So: build a desk, use it for a week, never save it — fine, it will be waiting on that machine. Want it on your laptop too, or want a permanent copy you can always return to? Layouts → Save as, give it a name.

Each named layout carries its own drill-down. A scanning desk can expand into charts and the chain; a strategy desk can expand into the payoff analyzer. They do not share.

The built-in layouts (Position Scan, Wheel desk, Daily + Weekly, Elliott desk, Strategy desk) are read-only. Change one and use Save as to make it yours.

• The toolbar is changing the wrong chart. It drives the active slot. Click the header of the one you mean — its header tints blue.
• A study I added while expanded is not on the small chart. Check which answer you gave the save prompt. “This chart only” puts it on one; “All charts” puts it on every chart in the layout.
• My drill-down windows are empty. They follow the expanded ticker, so they need a chart to have been expanded — they do not appear in the grid, only in fullscreen.
• Eight charts feel slow. Elliott Wave and pattern detection are the expensive ones. They are worth having on a chart you are studying and rarely worth having on all eight — which is exactly what the drill-down is for.

More on what each overlay does: Chart Studies, Elliott Wave and Drawing Tools.