Getting started

This page shows how to sign in, what each part of the screen does, and how the Safe/Armed switch controls trading. Read it before your first trade. Back to the guide index. Trading words are in the glossary.

In short

You sign in with one password. The app opens on the Live board.
The top bar holds your money figures, the status, the stake, the Safe/Armed switch and Cancel all.
A click on a price places an order only while the switch shows Armed.
The app goes back to Safe after 30 minutes without a trading action, and in some other cases. Each start of the app is in Safe.
Cancel all works in Safe and in Armed.

The basics

Open the app. The sign-in page asks only for your password.
Type your password.
Press Enter, or click Log in.

The app opens on the Live board. If the password is wrong, the page shows Incorrect password. After five wrong passwords, the app locks the sign-in for 1 minute. Each wrong password after that doubles the lock, up to 15 minutes. While the lock is on, the page shows Too many attempts · wait 30s and counts down. If the message comes back after the countdown, wait and try again. A session ends after 60 minutes without activity, or 12 hours after you sign in. Then the app shows the sign-in page again.

Learn the screen

The desktop screen: the board on the left, a docked ladder on the right

Area	Where	What it holds
Top bar	Across the top	Search, your money figures, the status, the stake, the Safe/Armed switch, Cancel all, notifications, theme and the menu
Rail	Down the left side	Live, Watchlist, Portfolio, Orders and Alerts, with Settings at the bottom. Orders shows the number of open orders. Alerts shows the number of unread notifications
Board	In the middle	The page that you select in the rail. Live shows the games by league, with a Sell and a Buy price for each outcome
Ladder	Docked on the right	All prices of one outcome, one row for each tick. Click a team name on the board to dock its ladder. Up to four ladders show side by side. A narrow window shows fewer
Dock	Along the bottom	The tabs Positions, Orders and Fills today, each with a count. Each position has an Exit button. Click a tab, or press `, to open or close the dock

The top bar, from left to right:

Item	What it does
Search	Opens the command palette (`Ctrl K`)
Cash	Your cash that you can spend
Exposure	The liquidation value of your positions plus the cost of your open combos. Put the pointer on it to see the two parts
P&L	Your unrealised P&L
Orders	The number of your open orders
Status	A dot and one word for the state of the app. See Read the status indicators
Stake $	Your stake presets. The highlighted preset is the stake of each click
Safe / Armed	The trading switch
Cancel all	Cancels all your open orders. The number is the count of open orders
Notifications	Your notification history, with the number of unread notifications
Theme	Light, Dark or System
Menu	Settings, Hotkeys, Log out and Log out everywhere

Click Cash, Exposure or P&L to open Portfolio. Click Orders to open Orders. On a narrower screen, the top bar hides P&L first, then Exposure, and Cancel all shows only an X and the count.

Set your stake

The stake is the dollar amount that one click spends.

In the top bar, find Stake $. On a phone, use the stake bar at the bottom of the board.
Click a preset. The preset is highlighted.
Put the pointer on a price. The tooltip shows what a click sends, for example Buy $1k → est. 5,000 sh @ 20¢.

The stake stays when you go to a different page. After you reload the page, the stake goes back to the first preset. To change the presets, see Settings.

Arm and disarm

On the switch, click Armed. A coloured line shows along the top of the screen. On a phone, the line is at the bottom of the header.
Trade.
When you stop, click Safe.

In Safe, a click on a price sends nothing, and a ring shows around the switch one time. You can cancel orders in Safe.

More options

Read the status indicators

The status shows one word for the worst problem. Put the pointer on it, or tap it on a phone, to see one line for each feed, the browser link, trading and the geoblock check.

Word	Meaning
`Live`	All connections work
`Loading`	The app waits for its first status from the server
`Connecting` / `Reconnecting`	The browser tries to connect to the server of the app. Until it connects, clicks on prices do not trade
`Disconnected`	The browser had no connection to the server for 10 seconds, or it cannot get the status from the server. Clicks on prices do not trade
`Geoblocked`	Polymarket does not allow trading from the location of the server. The tooltip names the location, for example `Geoblocked · US-VA`. Trading is off
`Trading off`	Trading is switched off on the server
`Stale`	A Polymarket feed stopped. Its prices are grey, and you cannot click them
`Checking 1`	Polymarket did not answer an order. The app asks Polymarket what happened. See Orders being checked
`Fake data`	Phone only. The server uses a demo venue. Prices, games and orders are not real

If more than one problem occurs, the status shows the first one in this order: Disconnected, Geoblocked, Trading off, Stale, Connecting or Reconnecting, Checking, Fake data, Live. When the word changes, the status fills with colour for 5 seconds. Then it becomes muted again. Other indicators in the top bar:

Indicator	Meaning
`Fake` / `Fake data`	The server uses a demo venue. Nothing that you see or do goes to Polymarket
`Not connected`	The server has no account set up
`Read-only`	The app can read your positions. It cannot see cash or orders, and it cannot trade
`Connecting`	The server checks the credentials of the account
`Account error`	The credentials of the account failed. The tooltip gives the reason. Click it to open Settings › Account
`Key expires in 5d`	The Session Key that lets the app trade expires soon. This shows from 14 days before. Tell the person who set up your account
`Session Key expired`	Trading stops until that person renews the key
A grey figure	The figure is not up to date. Its tooltip gives the reason, for example `Account data stale: waiting for the server`

When the app goes back to Safe by itself

The switch goes back to Safe in these cases:

What happened	What you see
No trading action for 30 minutes. To change the time, see Settings	In the last 2 minutes, the Armed side counts down (`1:59`). The tooltip of the switch shows, for example, `Safe in 12:04 without a trading action`
The app started again	Each start is in Safe
You logged out, or no login session is left
The geoblock check failed, or it reported a block	`Geoblocked` or `Trading off`
The credentials of the account stopped working, or the Session Key expired	`Account error` or `Session Key expired`
The app saw activity on the account that it did not place, for example a trade on polymarket.com	An `Activity outside this app` notification. To arm again, you must type your password. See the FAQ

Each change to Safe sends a Trading set to Safe notification with the reason, for example No trading action for 30 min or Login session expired. There is no notification when you click Safe, Log out or Log out everywhere. Activity outside the app sends its own notification. See Alerts and notifications. When Polymarket accepts only cancels, or the clock of the server is wrong, the switch stays Armed, but the app refuses each new order. The tooltip of the switch gives the reason.

When the switch reads Off

The switch shows Off when you cannot arm. Put the pointer on it, or tap it on a phone, to see the reason, for example Trading off · geoblocked. The FAQ lists each reason and what to do.

Use the app on a phone

The phone layout has the same features, arranged for touch:

Desktop	Phone
Top bar	A header with the menu (the logo), cash, the status, Safe/Armed and Cancel all (an X and the count)
Rail	A tab bar at the bottom: Live, Watchlist, Portfolio, Orders, Search
Notifications, Alerts, Settings, theme, Log out, Log out everywhere	In the menu behind the logo
Stake in the top bar	The stake bar at the bottom of the board
Docked ladder	A ladder sheet that comes up from the bottom. Tap a team to open it. Drag its handle down to close it
Right-click	Long-press
Tooltips	Tap the status, or the switch when it shows Off, to see the reason

Tap the cash figure to see your cash, exposure, unrealised P&L and open orders. A tap places an order only if your finger lifts within half a second and moves less than 8 pixels. Thus a scroll never places an order.

Good to know

The server checks each order again, whatever the screen shows. A grey button is only a hint.
When more than one panel can take the trading keys, for example the board and a docked ladder, a thin line along the top of a panel shows which panel has the focus. Click a panel, or press F6, to move the focus.
To sign out, click Log out in the menu. Log out everywhere ends all sessions on all devices, this one too.

​Getting started

​In short

​The basics

​Sign in

​Learn the screen

​Set your stake

​Arm and disarm

​More options

​Read the status indicators

​When the app goes back to Safe by itself

​When the switch reads Off

​Use the app on a phone

​Good to know