Learn Charting Desk

Welcome

Charting Desk is browser-based market charting and research software for studying financial markets. It provides charts, historical and market data, technical indicators, screening, visualization and position-planning tools. It does not execute trades, provide personalized investment advice, manage funds or facilitate transactions.

Everything here is written for a complete beginner. You do not need any market jargon. The glossary explains every term, and if a word looks technical, hover the matching control in the app and a plain-English hint appears.

Your first chart

You will have a chart on screen in a minute. Nothing here is permanent: closing a chart does not delete your drawings, and you can always start again.

1. Go to chartingdesk.com/app. The page opens on IVV daily.
2. Open Chart presets from the Layout button at the top-right. The list stays open while you try them.
3. Flick through them: click one to apply it, then try another. Each preset swaps the studies and automatic layers, and your own drawings are never touched.
4. Pan by dragging the chart. Zoom with the mouse wheel over the chart.
5. Click a timeframe button in the top bar (for example 4H or 1W) to change the bar size.
6. Hover the chart. The top-left legend shows that bar's open, high, low, close, change and volume.
7. Click Indicators and add RSI if it is not already there.
8. Hover a button you do not understand. A hint appears after a moment.
9. Double-click the chart to fit it back to the screen.

The screen

The window is made of a few named parts. Knowing their names makes the rest of this guide easy to follow.

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Header. One row along the top: the ≡ app menu, the brand, the Search a symbol button, the timeframe buttons, the bar-type button, Display, Indicators, Compare, Alert, Replay, the Layout button, Undo and Redo, the sidebar toggle and the account button.
2. App menu. The ≡ button opens File, View, Options, Mode and Help as submenus. They mirror the header controls. Full list in the menu map.
3. Tool rail. The slim, icon-only column of drawing tools on the left, grouped as Cursor, Measure and edit (measure, eraser and Text), Lines, Channels, Fibonacci, Shapes and annotations, Annotation stickers, Position planning, Automatic levels and forecast, Compare and overlays, Magnet and Chart. A group opens a fly-out to the side.
4. Chart. Up to four independent panes. Each has a legend, a price axis, a time axis and, when studies call for it, indicator areas below. Volume draws as an overlay in the price pane.
5. Right panel. A narrow icon strip, then one panel at a time: Watchlist, Assets, Details, News, Ideas, Objects and Scan.
6. Status bar. The thin strip at the bottom: a live dot, the data source, freshness with a refresh icon, the series, the time zone, and the percent, log and auto scale toggles.

Accounts and plans

You can use Charting Desk straight away without an account. A free account keeps your work, and a Patron pass unlocks the paid data and tools. To sign in, use your email and a password, or ask for a one-time sign-in link by email instead. This table is the whole picture.

The pass is a one-time, time-limited purchase: 30 days or one year, with no automatic renewal, and the annual pass is refundable within 14 days.

See Privacy, data and risk for what is stored, and the in-app About dialog for the current prices.

Simple and Advanced

The interface has two personalities. Simple hides the specialised controls so beginners are not overwhelmed. Advanced reveals them. Switch between the two in ≡ → Options → Preferences → Interface → Simple / Advanced (or press Ctrl+,).

On a phone

Open the same site on a phone and Charting Desk serves a simpler, chart-first layout: the chart fills the screen, with a slim top bar (symbol, style, undo, more, and a tap-to-refresh freshness chip when data is old) and a row of timeframe chips.

It keeps the essentials:

• Any symbol through the same search: crypto, stocks and ETFs, forex and commodities.
• Chart styles, four ready-made setups instead of the full indicator library.
• Touch gestures: drag to pan, pinch to zoom, double-tap to fit, and tap to inspect a bar.
• Drawing: trend lines, horizontal and vertical levels, rectangles, circles and triangles, curves, and Fibonacci retracement. Tap a shape to select it; a long press opens a quick menu with its settings and delete.
• Position planning with the long and short tools.
• Watchlist, alerts and Learn, plus Install app to add Charting Desk to your home screen.
• Language: switch between the 15 languages from the ⋯ menu.

How to read a candle

A chart is a set of candles, and each candle is one period of time. Reading a single candle tells you four prices and who was in control.

• Open: the first price of the period.
• Close: the last price. This is the one that matters most.
• High and low: the extremes reached during the period, drawn as thin lines called wicks.
• Body: the thick part between open and close. A long body means a strong move; a small body means indecision.
• Colour: green when the close is above the open, red when below. The app uses these colours, and the direction is also shown in the legend so colour is never the only clue.

A run of candles tells a story: where price was rejected, where it paused, and which way it keeps going. You will learn to read that story through the rest of this guide and the built-in course.

Timeframes

A timeframe is the amount of time each bar covers. It is the single most important choice on a chart, because it changes what every indicator and every pattern means.

The top bar shows 1H, 4H, 12H, 1D, 1W and 1M as buttons, with 2W, 3M, 6M and 1Y under More timeframes.

Every bar follows UTC time, so a day starts at midnight UTC. Longer bars (weeks and months) are built from the daily bars.

Bar types

The Bar type button changes how price is drawn. All twelve draw from the same underlying data, so your drawings are unaffected when you switch. Click the button to cycle to the next type, right-click it (or long-press on a touch screen) to choose one, or press Shift+C. The non-time types (Heikin-Ashi, Renko, Range, Kagi, Line Break and Point & Figure) transform the bars, so price studies are recomputed on the transformed series.

Moving around the chart

Moving around is easier than it looks. Three gestures cover almost everything, and none of them can damage your work.

The legend and status bar

Two quiet but important readouts.

The chart legend (top-left)

Shows the ticker, the source, the asset class and the timeframe. Below that it lists the hovered bar's O H L C, change percent and volume. If you are not hovering, it shows the latest bar instead. Each study you add also lists its current value here.

The status bar (bottom)

Shows a live dot, the data source, freshness (for example "Updated 2m ago") with a refresh icon, the series (for example "1D · 365 bars"), the time zone, and the percent, log and auto scale toggles.

Scales and overlays

These controls decide how the price axis and the chart furniture behave. In the header they live inside the Display button.

Where prices come from

You do not connect anything, sign in, or paste an API key. Charting Desk reaches its data sources for you and quietly caches what it downloads, so a chart reopens instantly.

What is covered

• US and international stocks and ETFs: daily history for everyone. Intraday bars are for US stocks and ETFs and are Patron only.
• Crypto: live charts, with real-time updates.
• Commodities: daily.
• Forex: daily for everyone; intraday price update for Patron.
• Indices: not offered directly. Use an index ETF instead, for example IVV for the S&P 500.

Sync, cache and the stale flag

• Cache: downloaded bars are stored so a chart reopens instantly and works offline.
• Sync: the circular-arrow Sync button fetches the latest bars for the active chart.
• Stale: if data is old, a small note in the status bar says so.
• Auto-refresh: the Auto refresh setting (Off, 15s, 30s, 1m, 5m, 15m, 30m or 1h) reloads the active chart on a timer. The choices that do not suit the active source are greyed out, since a daily-only feed has nothing new to fetch every 15 seconds.

Live prices

For crypto, the live dot in the status bar streams updates so the newest bar ticks in real time. It shows live, connecting or reconnecting. Live works on the 1H, 4H, 12H, 1D, 1W and 1M timeframes. The slowest timeframes simply refresh on a timer.

Live prices need a steady internet connection. Some networks block them; the chart then shows reconnecting and falls back to normal syncing, so you are never stuck.

Finding a symbol

The search window is the front door. Open it from the symbol button in the header, or press Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac), then type a ticker or a company name.

• One search, every source. It looks in every source the edition offers.
• Grouped results. Matches are grouped by asset class: Crypto, Stocks, ETFs, Forex and Commodities.
• Source on every row. Each result shows where its data will come from.
• Your symbols first. Watchlist and recently viewed symbols float to the top.
• Ranked sensibly. An exact ticker beats a prefix, which beats a partial name.
• Keyboard first. Move with the arrow keys and press Enter to open a row; press Esc to close.

Try AAPL, BTCUSDT or EURUSD.

Asset lists

The Assets panel browses the catalogue instead of searching it, with a tree you can open a bit at a time: a Popular list, then sections such as Stocks, ETFs, Crypto and Forex, each with groups inside. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ-100 groups list their full membership.

• Type in the filter box to narrow the tree as you go.
• Groups fill in only when you open them, so the panel stays quick.
• Click any ticker to load it on the active chart.
• Open it from the Assets item on the right-hand strip, the View menu, or Ctrl+Shift+A.

The Stocks section lists US and international stocks and ETFs, grouped by major index and global region. Forex is separate, and commodities are available as a daily line.

Watchlist

The Watchlist is a simple, ordered list of the symbols you care about. It is also a universe for the Scanner. Free account

• Add: with a chart open, click the + in the Watchlist panel header, or the watchlist icon in the toolbar.
• Load: click a symbol in the list.
• Organise: right-click a row to rename its alias, move it to a named list, or reorder it. Right-click a list header to create, rename, move or delete a list.
• Remove: click the × on the row.

Details and news

The Details panel covers the instrument and the week ahead, and the News panel brings the headlines. Both are cache-first, so they stay instant after the first load, and refresh when you change symbol and about once a minute while open.

Heatmap

The Heatmap is a full-area view opened from the Mode menu. It gives you a bird's-eye view of a whole board at once. Each tile is a symbol: the size of the tile is how much it traded, and the colour is how much it moved. Green is up, red is down, and deeper shades mean bigger moves. The forex board has no traded volume, so its tiles are equal-sized.

• Universe chooses the board: the live Crypto Majors and Crypto Altcoins boards, plus the US stocks, Sectors, International and Forex Majors boards.
• Period is Live, 1h, 1D or 1M. Live is crypto only; the rest use cached bars.
• Click any tile to load its chart and return to the main chart.
• The refresh button re-pulls quotes on the cached boards. Cached boards update on their own while open (roughly every five minutes). The number of tiles scales to the window, so a small window shows only the leading names.

The crypto board is included with a free account, and every board is unlocked with Patron.

Drawing tools

The slim, icon-only rail on the left holds every drawing tool, grouped by purpose: Cursor, Measure and edit (measure, eraser and Text), Lines, Channels, Fibonacci, Shapes and annotations, Annotation stickers, Position planning, Automatic levels and forecast, Compare and overlays, Magnet and Chart. A group opens a fly-out beside the rail when clicked; each fly-out is a labelled list, so every tool is named even when the icon alone is not obvious.

Draw in three steps

1. Pick a tool. Most are two-point tools, and the cursor becomes a crosshair.
2. Click once for the first point, move, then click again for the second. Three-point tools (Fibonacci extension, the parallel and disjoint channels, the pitchforks, curve, arc, rotated rectangle, flat top / bottom, fib channel and pitchfan) take one more click. Regression trend is fitted to the two times you click, and the fib arcs and circles use a centre and an edge point. The path adds a point per click and finishes when you double-click or press Enter.
3. To reshape it, pick Select, click the drawing and drag its handles.

Select and Hand

Select (V) is for working with what you have drawn. Hand moves the chart, and every tool has it on demand: hold Space or use the middle mouse button. Select and navigation never fight, because a left drag follows what you grabbed: a drawing moves, empty space pans.

• A click on a drawing selects it; a click on empty space clears the selection. Shift-click (or Ctrl-click) adds to the selection.
• A drag on any drawing moves it directly, whether it was selected first or not.
• To select several at once, drag with the right mouse button (or hold Shift and drag on empty space) to draw a marquee around them. Everything inside is selected. A plain right-click, without dragging, opens the action menu instead.
• A left drag on empty space pans the chart. If you would rather it box-selected instead, switch Empty drag to Marquee in Preferences.

Fibonacci

Fibonacci tools measure a move and mark where price might pause.

• Retracement (F): two points. Marks the pullback levels between them.
• Extension (X): three points. Projects targets beyond the move (the classic uses are 1.272 and 1.618).
• Fan (G): two points. Radiates levels diagonally as dynamic support and resistance.
• Auto Fibonacci: finds the visible swing for you and draws the retracement in one click.

Double-click a Fibonacci drawing to open its settings. There you can edit all 24 levels by hand, give each its own colour, show or hide individual levels, and tick Reverse to swap which end is 0%. A new drawing starts on the classical set: 0, 0.382, 0.5, 0.618 and 1. One-click presets include Discount Zones (0.618, 0.786 and 0.826), the wider common set, and the extensions.

Automatic levels and structure

The Auto fly-out is a shelf of reference levels the computer can find for you. Each row is an independent on/off toggle with a colour swatch, and nothing is on until you ask.

• The Sensitivity dropdown (Low, Medium, High) tunes how eager the structure detectors are: 3.5, 2.5 and 1.5 times ATR. Medium is the default.
• Follow timeframe keeps the automatic drawings matched to the timeframe you are viewing. When it is off and the drawings came from another timeframe, a small warning chip says so.
• Refresh auto and Clear auto affect only machine-made drawings. Your own drawings are never touched.

Editing drawings and the Objects panel

Selecting and editing

• Select (V), then click a drawing. Handles appear at its anchor points.
• Drag a handle to reshape; drag the body to move the whole drawing.
• Copy, paste, duplicate: Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+D. Select all with Ctrl+A.
• Delete: Del or Backspace. The Eraser (Q) deletes by dragging over drawings, and one drag is one undo step.
• Undo and redo: Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y).
• Lock or hide any drawing so you can keep working around it. Locking is absolute: a locked drawing cannot be selected, moved, erased or deleted until you unlock it.

Text labels

The Text tool places a resizable box you type into. The box is invisible by default, but it wraps text, holds paragraphs and can take a background Fill.

• Place and type: pick the Text tool, click one corner, then click the opposite corner. The editor opens straight away with the placeholder selected, so you can type over it.
• Paragraphs and wrapping: press Enter for a new paragraph, and long lines wrap to the box width. Ctrl+Enter (⌘+Enter) commits, Esc cancels, and clicking away commits.
• Edit in place: a single click inside an existing box opens the editor with the caret where you clicked. A click on the box's border selects the box without editing, so Del removes it; a double-click opens the settings window, where you can set the font size and a background Fill.
• Shape labels use the same paragraphs and padding.

The per-drawing settings dialog

Double-click any drawing (or right-click it and pick Settings, or use the pencil in the Objects list) to open a full settings window: name, visibility, lock, colour, width, line style, opacity, text and font, placement, fill opacity for closed shapes, editable anchor coordinates and templates. OK and Cancel sit in a pinned footer, and one session counts as a single undo step.

Templates

A template is a saved look for a drawing: colour, width, text and Fibonacci levels. Select a drawing, then pick a built-in template (Support, Resistance and others) from the right-click Shape template menu or the drawing's Templates section, or choose Save current as template to make your own.

The Objects panel

The Objects panel lists everything you have added, and is the fastest way to tidy a busy chart.

• Drawings: filter, rename, reorder by dragging, show or hide, lock, edit, delete, clear all, or hide all.
• Indicators: show or hide each study, or remove it. Hidden studies stay computed, so indicator alerts keep working.

Adding indicators

Indicators (also called studies) are calculations drawn from price. Charting Desk ships 53 built-ins, organised by category so you can find what you need.

To add one

1. Click Indicators in the header to open the Indicators panel.
2. In Add an indicator, choose from the picker. A one-line description appears underneath.
3. Adjust any parameters (period, colours, levels) beside the picker.
4. Click Add. It appears in the On chart list and on the chart.

Each study shows a placement chip: Overlay on the price chart, Pane in its own panel below, or Volume in the price pane's volume overlay. The order in the On chart list is the draw order.

Favourites is a saved set you can toggle on and off as a group. A new profile seeds it with Volume, the EMA 21, 50 and 200, and RSI (14).

Guests and free accounts see a smaller library, and Patron unlocks all 53 indicators.

Volume profile and Value Zones

Volume profile

A volume profile is a sideways histogram showing how much trade happened at each price, rather than at each time. It offers four modes:

• Off.
• Visible: profiles the bars currently on screen.
• Session: one profile per session.
• Anchored: profiles from a bar you pick. Use the Anchor control, then click a bar.

The POC (point of control) is the price with the most volume, and it often acts like a magnet. Switch on Value area in the Display options to shade the 70% zone (VAH and VAL). It is off by default.

Value Zones

Value Zones read the trend's structure, measure its last impulse leg, and shade where a pullback would be attractive. In an uptrend it marks a Value Buy and Discount Buy zone, with target and stop lines at the leg extremes. In a downtrend it marks the mirror-image Premium Sell and Peak Sell zones. If the structure is mixed, it draws nothing, which is itself useful information.

Chart presets

A preset applies an entire chart setup in one click: the studies plus the automatic levels, structure and volume profile. Presets are the quickest way to try a style you have not used before.

Open the top-right Layout button and choose Chart presets. The list stays open, so you can flick through the setups without re-opening it; choose Manage presets… for the full dialog.

• Groups include Starter (the Default Desk), Classical, Indicator era, Market profile, Structure and Modern volume-price.
• Every preset has a short why, so you know what it is trying to show you.
• Applying a preset replaces the studies and automatic layers. Your own drawings are never touched.
• Save current as preset captures your setup under My presets, so you can reuse or share the setup later.

Your own indicators

If the 53 built-ins are not enough, you can write your own study in a small, safe expression language. There is no plugin system and no risk to your machine: the language can only do maths on price series. Patron

1. Open Indicators, then the Library, then New custom indicator.
2. Give it a name. Hover hints explain the fields.
3. Choose Overlay (on price), Pane (below the chart) or Volume.
4. Optionally pick a Higher TF. The expression is then recomputed on locally resampled higher-timeframe bars.
5. Type the expression and click Add to chart.

Inputs are open, high, low, close, volume, hl2, hlc3 and ohlc4. Around 34 functions are available, including sma, ema, wma, hma, dema, tema, rma, stdev, rsi, atr, highest, lowest, sum, cum, shift, change, roc, cross and bar_index. Use plot(x, "Name", "#rrggbb", "histogram") to style each line and fill(a, b, "#rrggbb") to shade a band.

Two special calls open the door to bigger ideas: study("rsi", 14) borrows a built-in study's series, and htf(series, "1d") samples a series at a higher timeframe.

Scripts are saved in a library, and the whole library can be exported and imported as JSON. Custom studies render exactly like built-ins, so panes, the legend, alerts and workspaces all work with them.

Compare and analogues

Compare overlay

Click the Compare button, search a second symbol, and it is drawn over your chart, normalised to percent change from the left edge of the view. The legend reads something like MCD +4.20%. This answers "is this instrument strong or weak against that one?" without price levels getting in the way.

Historical analogues

The rail Compare group's H tool finds past periods that looked like today. Pick a source symbol, a date range and an optional bar count, set an anchor bar, then Add analogue. The source history is resampled and projected as a dashed line. With the Select tool you can drag it forward in time, stretch it, or scale it.

Seasonality

Seasonality compares a symbol's behaviour in the same calendar window across past years, so you can see whether a month or period has a tendency. It is descriptive, not a forecast. Open it from the Mode menu.

Add up to five symbols and choose a date range. The Mode selector offers three views:

• By year: one symbol's year-by-year curves, with a bold average and a range band. Click a year in the legend to leave it out of the average.
• By month: the average return for each calendar month, drawn as a signed bar chart. This is the quickest way to see which months tend to be strong or weak.
• By ticker: one window compared across symbols, with the ticker names in their own column.

The table below the chart lists the mean, median, positive share and number of years. Seasonality reads split- and dividend-adjusted daily bars, so returns are comparable across years. A Regime filter can restrict the years to, for example, election years or recessions.

Earnings overlay

The rail Compare group's E toggle draws reported quarterly earnings per share as slim blue bars on the price pane, scaled into the visible price range. Each bar is labelled with its value. It applies to instruments that report earnings (stocks and ETFs); crypto has none. The toggle is off by default; switch it on when you want the context.

Scan

The Scan panel checks many markets at once for chart patterns. It turns "show me candidates" into a short, reasoned list instead of scrolling through hundreds of charts.

• Universe: Crypto, US equities, International, Forex, Commodities, or your Watchlist.
• Pattern: All, Base, Breakout, Reversal, Momentum, Continuation or Volume.
• Recipes: 16 built-in screens, including base accumulation, fresh highs, gap ups, near 52-week highs, double bottom, double top, EMA and MACD crosses, thrust, moving-average alignment, relative strength, RSI divergence, pullback, flag, volume surge and volume climax.
• Results are grouped in collapsible sections per recipe. Each row says why it matched, which way it points, and the price that would prove it wrong. Click a row to load the chart.
• Sensitivity (Low, Medium, High) tunes every recipe at once.
• Saved scans keep a recipe and universe combination, so you can rerun a screen in one click.

The scanner works from the daily bars already cached on your device, so load or sync the symbols you care about first. A free account includes the breakout recipes, and Patron unlocks all 16.

Ideas

The Ideas panel asks the app to look at the chart the way an analyst would. It suggests an entry, a stop and a target, with the reasons for and against, so you can decide. This is an automated second opinion, not a recommendation.

• An overlay draws the entry, stop and target, with risk and reward shading, and a dashed projection when the setup is still waiting.
• A popover and the Ideas panel list up to six setups, actionable ones first and then by score, with the direction, the strategy name, entry, stop, target and risk-to-reward.
• For and against points show what supports and what argues against each idea.
• You can Focus, set Alerts, open the Plan, Pin it, or Dismiss it.
• Seven strategies ship: Value zones, Trend pullback, Range fade, Breakout and retest, RSI divergence, Volume climax, and MA cross. Each carries a higher-timeframe confluence note.

Pinned ideas persist per symbol, dismissals expire when the setup leaves the chart, and named sets can be saved. Confidence reads as Low, Medium or High.

Planning a position

The Long and Short tools turn a chart idea into a plan with explicit risk. They are about discipline, not prediction.

1. Pick Long (S) or Short (Shift+S).
2. Click your entry price.
3. Click your stop price. The risk band appears immediately.
4. Drag a take-profit line to set the target. By default there is one target at 2R, twice your risk.
5. Double-click the position to open its settings, where you can add up to TP1 to TP4, each as an R multiple with the percentage you would close there.

Entry, stop and every target are independent price levels. Drag any line to move just that level: moving the stop does not move the targets, and moving a target does not move the stop. The reward-to-risk and the blended expected R update live as you adjust them, and you can type exact prices in the settings dialog.

Projection figures

Projection figures are ready-made price-path shapes (33 of them) that you drop onto the chart as translucent ghost candles. They answer "if price follows this kind of path, where does it end up?"

1. Open Projection figures from the rail's Forecast group.
2. Pick a figure from the list.
3. Click two opposite corners on the chart to place it.
4. Drag any point to reshape it and fit it to your levels. Drag it into the future to project forward.

A Render option lets you choose "match chart style" or force a simple line. Figures follow your bar type by default.

Alerts

Alerts watch a price level and tell you when price reaches it, so you do not have to stare at the screen. They work for crypto and equities. Free account

1. Click Alert in the header to open the Alerts window.
2. Choose the condition (for example "crosses above") and set the level. The level starts at the latest close.
3. Optionally give the alert a name. Leave it blank to keep the automatic description.
4. On the web, tick Email me when this fires to also be told by email, so it reaches you while the chart is closed.
5. Click Set alert. The Alert button shows how many alerts are armed.

Bar Replay

Bar Replay hides the future so you can practise decision-making on historical bars. It is the single most useful learning feature in the app. Free account

1. Click Replay in the header.
2. The full chart appears and asks you to click a bar to choose where to start.
3. Use play, step forward, step back, and the speed dropdown (2× by default; also 1×, 4× and Fast).
4. Draw and add indicators as if it were live. Alerts are evaluated on load and on live ticks, not as you step through replay.
5. Press the rewind button (↺) to pick a new start bar, or the close button to exit.

Several charts at once

You can show up to four independent charts at once. The Layout dropdown offers Single, Two columns, Two rows and a 2 × 2 grid. Click any pane to make it active; the header, the rail and the panel then apply to that pane. Patron

• Link symbols keeps every pane on the same symbol as you change it.
• Link timeframes keeps every pane on the same timeframe.
• Turn both off to compare up to four different markets.
• Hover a pane in a multi-pane layout for a maximize button. It enlarges that pane temporarily without changing your saved layout.

Blackboard

Blackboard, in the Mode menu, replaces the chart with a blank, gridless canvas and the full drawing toolkit. Use it to sketch an idea, map a strategy, or explain a concept without a symbol in the way.

• Board drawings are saved separately from any symbol, so leaving the board never disturbs your charts.
• Most of the tool rail works here: lines, shapes, arrows, doodles, text and stickers. Automatic levels, auto structure and the magnet are disabled on the board.
• Choose Main chart to return to your chart.

Chart modes

The Mode menu swaps the whole chart area, and only one mode is active at a time:

Workspaces

A workspace is a saved snapshot of your whole view: symbol, timeframe, bar type, indicators, scale, drawings, compare, panes and more. It is how you return to a setup tomorrow without rebuilding it. Free account

• Open Workspaces from the Layout button in the header.
• Save the current view under a name, or load, rename, reorder and delete saved ones.
• To keep your whole desk as one file, use File → Save a copy….

Your last session is restored automatically on the next launch when the startup choice is Last session.

Export and backup

Your work stays in your browser. There are two ways to move it or keep a copy: export the chart as an image, and back up the whole desk to a file or the encrypted cloud.

Export is found in File → Export. It is an image only, and it is the same for every tier.

Backing up your whole desk

Your drawings, watchlist, alerts, workspaces, settings and preferences make up your desk. There are two ways to keep a copy:

• Cloud desk. An optional encrypted copy on the server, so you can restore after clearing your browser data. A free account keeps one version; Patron keeps three. It is off until you opt in, and your copy is encrypted before it is stored. Free account
• File backup. A single file you download and keep yourself, holding your settings, layouts, watchlist, alerts, drawings, workspaces, presets, custom indicators, templates, scan sets, analogues and course progress. Restore it on any computer. Patron

Save a file with File → Save a copy…, the rail's Save button, or Ctrl+S; bring one back with File → Restore…. The cloud copy is managed in the Account window's Your data section. Restoring offers merge (layer it over what you have) or replace, and a replace keeps a safety copy and rolls back if anything fails. When you sign in on a new browser, Charting Desk restores your latest cloud copy automatically, so you pick up where you left off.

Themes and interface size

Ten colour schemes ship with the app, five dark and five light. Choose one in ≡ → View → Theme or in Preferences (Ctrl+,) → Appearance; it applies instantly and your choice is remembered.

• Dark: Prussian, Graphite, Basalt, Fathom, Tungsten.
• Light: Kaolin (the default), Paper, Linen, Chalk, Newsprint.

Kaolin is the light theme the app and this site are designed around. On a first visit the app follows your system's light or dark preference; you can change it any time.

Changing themes never changes your data, drawings or settings, only the colours.

Interface size scales the whole shell, which is useful on a high-resolution screen. Preferences also let you set candle up and down colours, per-tool drawing colours, the number of price decimals, the default timeframe and gridlines.

The built-in course

Learn mode is a complete beginner's course built into the app, with worked examples drawn on real-looking charts. It lives in its own world: entering it does not touch your saved charts, drawings or settings, and your practice sketches are discarded when you leave.

• Open it from the Mode menu, or use the Learn shortcut in the toolbar.
• Each lesson loads an annotated example, shows the outcome, and offers prose, callouts and steps.
• There is an inline Reveal control, interactive exercises (pick on the chart, draw along) and a chapter quiz with an explanation for every answer.
• Every module closes with a graded exam (70% to pass).
• Your progress is stored locally and you can toggle it on or off.

Guided walkthroughs

These put the pieces together in the order a real analysis usually happens. Follow along in the app.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts never fire while you are typing in a text box. Press ? for this list inside the app.

Settings

Most settings are controls in the header, the tool rail or the right-hand panels; the rest live in Preferences (Ctrl+,). Here is the whole map.

Menu map

The ≡ app menu at the start of the header mirrors the header controls, which helps when you cannot find an icon.

The top-right Layout button gathers the pane layout, the bar type, the chart presets and the themes into one menu, ending with Workspaces….

Glossary

Troubleshooting

The chart is blank, or nothing loads

Check your connection, then click Sync. The first load of a new symbol always takes a moment. If a retry button appears, click it. Data comes from public feeds that occasionally hiccup; trying again usually works.

Live shows "reconnecting"

Live prices need a steady connection, which is blocked on some networks and in some regions. The chart still works; it simply falls back to normal syncing. Click the live dot to turn streaming off if it is distracting.

The last bar keeps changing

That is expected. The newest bar is not final until its period closes. A 1D bar keeps moving until the UTC day ends, and then it is written to the cache as a finished bar.

My drawings appeared on a different timeframe

Drawings belong to the symbol, not the timeframe, so a line on the daily chart shows on every timeframe. This keeps levels consistent. Delete it if you only wanted it on one timeframe.

I cannot draw anything

Three usual causes. A tool might not be armed (press its key or click the rail tool). The drawing might be locked or hidden (check the Objects panel). Or you might be on the Blackboard with a two-click tool; press Esc and start again.

An alert never fired

Alerts are one-shot and are checked after a sync and on each live crypto tick. On the web, a server also runs your email alerts while the chart is closed. Check that it is armed (the Alert button shows the count), that the condition and level are right, and that it has not already triggered. Re-arm it if it did.

Why did the price scale stop following the price?

You switched to a manual scale by dragging or wheeling over the price axis. Double-click the chart, or press the pane's fit button (or 0), to return to auto-scaling.

The Scan finds nothing

The scanner reads only cached daily bars. If your cache is thin, load or sync the symbols you care about, or widen the universe and lower the sensitivity.

A symbol is missing

Equity coverage is US stocks and ETFs plus a searchable international list, and forex is major pairs. Crypto coverage is broad but not universal. Try the Assets panel, or a slightly different ticker format.

My custom indicator shows an error

The editor points to the line and column. The usual causes are a missing argument, an unknown function name, or an uppercase name where a lowercase input is expected. The "Inputs and functions" panel in the editor lists everything available.

How do I start over cleanly?

Options → Data → Flush cached data deletes stored bars and re-syncs, keeping your symbols, drawings and settings. Clear all drawings removes every drawing for every symbol. Both ask for confirmation first.

Privacy, data and risk

Your data stays yours

• Charts, drawings, alerts, watchlists and settings are stored locally, in your own browser storage (IndexedDB and localStorage).
• If you opt in to the cloud desk, an encrypted copy is kept on the server so you can restore after clearing your browser. It is encrypted before it is stored, and it is off by default. A free account keeps one version; Patron keeps three.
• No analytics or usage tracking. Your work is not studied or profiled.
• Exports and file backups are files you create and control.

Data and terms

Market data is provided by third parties and can be delayed, incomplete or briefly unavailable. Charting Desk is an independent tool and is not affiliated with any exchange or data provider. The Disclaimer and Terms list the data sources and the terms that apply.

Not advice

Charting Desk is for research and education. Nothing in the app is investment advice, and no feature can predict the future. Ideas, Value Zones, scans and auto structure are suggestions you must judge for yourself. Past performance never guarantees future results.

Risk

Markets can move against you quickly. Never risk money you cannot afford to lose, and decide your risk before you enter, not after. The position tool exists to make that habit easy.

See the in-app About dialog for the live version and links to the full Disclaimer, Privacy and Terms pages published at chartingdesk.com.

Getting help in the app

You are never expected to remember everything. The app explains itself in three ways.

1. Hover hints. Hover (or keyboard-focus) almost any control and a tooltip appears after about two seconds. The ? popovers open the longer educational text.
2. Hint level. The Hints setting in Preferences → Interface selects All, Technical (short), Educational (the why and the pitfalls), or Off.
3. Help window. Press ? or F1, or open Help & shortcuts from the Help menu, for the full keyboard reference and feature primer.