First run on Windows — sign in, the default workspace, opening panels, and your first desk preset.
This guide walks you through the first ten minutes in the Sharpnel desktop terminal on Windows: the first-run license screen, signing in, opening panels, putting up your first chart, and loading a desk preset. By the end the terminal is saving your layout automatically and you can stop thinking about it.
The first thing you see on a fresh install is the Welcome to Sharpnel Desktop screen — the License Agreement & Risk Disclosure. Read it, check "I have read and agree to the End User License Agreement above", and Agree & Continue lights up. Declining quits the app — there's no way around it, and that's deliberate.
The same screen has one optional checkbox: anonymous crash reports. It's off by default, no personal data is collected, and you can change your mind later in Settings. You only see this screen once per license revision — it won't nag you on every launch.
Next comes the sign-in gate. The terminal needs to know who you are before it can stream your entitled data, so it stays locked until you're signed in. The desktop never asks for a password — it hands the whole thing to your browser:
Authorize Desktop Access. If not, you sign in first and land back on the same page.The token is stored in the Windows credential store and refreshes itself, so you stay signed in across relaunches. It's a separate, revocable credential — you can kill it from your account dashboard at any time without touching your web session. To sign in or out later, use File > Sign in to Sharpnel… and File > Sign out.
On first launch the terminal loads the Command Center preset: order flow (DOM and Time & Sales) on the left, the chart and world map in the center, sector treemap / watchlist / breadth on the right, and a wide news feed along the bottom. I'd rather you land on a dense, working cockpit than an empty window — you can reshape or replace all of it in minutes.
Across the very top runs the index marquee — an always-visible ticker strip showing ES, NQ, RTY, YM, BTC and VIX by default (editable in Settings). Click any tile and every symbol-driven panel — chart, DOM, tape — re-anchors to that symbol.
A short guided tour overlays the window on first launch and walks the key surfaces. Skip it if you want — you can re-run it any time from Help > Show Tour Again.
Everything in the terminal is a panel: a free-floating dock you can drag, tab together, or detach to another monitor. There are two ways to open one.
The command palette — press Ctrl+P anywhere. Type a few letters to fuzzy-match any command or panel; Enter executes, Esc closes. The palette also understands prefixes:
# | Panels only — "#foot" finds the Footprint panel without command noise. |
@ | Symbol picker — "@NQ" snaps the chart, DOM, and tape to that symbol. |
> | Commands (the default scope when you type with no prefix). |
The Add Panel menu — the top-level Add Panel menu groups every panel by workflow: Trading, Charts, Indicators, Order Flow, Options, Risk, Quant, Performance, Macro, and Workflow. The Macro section is further split (Rates & Curve, Liquidity & Central Banks, Growth & Inflation, and so on) because there are a lot of panels in there.
For multi-monitor work, Window > Multi-Monitor has one-click layouts plus Detach All Panels (Ctrl+Shift+F11), which floats every open panel tiled across all connected screens.
Add Panel > Charts > Chart V3 — or just type chart into Ctrl+P. (The Command Center preset already has one open.)Chart > Symbol Search...) and pick a symbol — the chart, DOM, and tape all follow. Clicking a marquee tile or using the palette's @ prefix does the same thing.VOL (volume bars, the default), 1m, 5m, 15m, 1h, 1D — or use Chart > Timeframe.Chart > Lock Price Scale pins the vertical scale; Chart > Reset View snaps everything back.That's deliberately basic — studies, order flow on the chart, and the deeper chart family (Footprint, TPO) have their own docs.
Presets are full desk layouts — a one-click arrangement of panels for a specific job. They live in the top-level Presets menu, grouped by desk: Trading, Macro & Rates, Research, Order Flow, and Options & Vol. A checkmark tracks whichever preset is active.
Try a few to get a feel for the range: Day Trader (chart + footprint + TPO center, DOM and tape on the right, positions and orders below), Order Flow (footprint center, DOM and tape flanking), Wall of Data (nine panels tiled 3×3), or Global Macro. Loading a preset replaces your current arrangement — if you've built something you like, save it first (next section).
Edit > Preferences... (Ctrl+,) opens the settings dialog, organized into five tabs: General, Audio, Marquee (the ticker strip's symbol list), Appearance (themes: Midnight — the default — Slate, and Classic), and Hotkeys. Changes apply live — theme, marquee symbols, and hotkey rebinds all take effect without a restart.
Two help surfaces worth knowing on day one: Help > Keyboard Shortcuts lists every binding — and lets you rebind them — while the Hotkey Cheat Sheet (F1) is the quick-reference version.
You never need to save manually. The terminal snapshots your full workspace — open panels, layout, geometry — every 30 seconds and again on exit, and restores it on the next launch. Close the app mid-session and you come back to the same desk.
Window > Save (Ctrl+S) forces a snapshot right now, if you're about to experiment.Window > Save Layout As... stores the current arrangement under a name; switch between saved layouts via Window > Load Layout.Window > Reset to defaults is the escape hatch if a layout gets away from you.Window > Export Workspace to JSON... writes your whole workspace to a file you can import on another machine — handy for a home/office pair.