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Master on one screen, previews on another

Your active client fills the monitor you play on. Every other account sits as a live preview on a tablet or side screen. Click a preview and it swaps into the big rect.

MASTER SLOTthe biggest slot — renders livewhichever seat is master sits hereMonitor you play on2preview3preview4preview5previewTablet / second screen
Click a preview (or press its hotkey) and that seat swaps into the master slot. The windows never move until you commit the swap.

The one rule that trips everyone up

The master slot is whichever slot is physically biggest. It is not a checkbox and it is not the first slot — EveDeck works it out from the geometry of your layout. If you draw four equal rectangles across two screens, nothing is dominant, and the master lands on whichever tile happens to win the tie-break. That is almost always why "I set my master but nothing shows up on my main monitor".

There are also two different things called master, and they do different jobs:

  • Master slot — a position. The biggest rectangle in the layout. Shown in the Layout Preview on the Layouts tab, and ticked in the Master column of the slot table.
  • Master seat — an account. Which character sits in that rectangle when nothing is swapped. Set from the Clients tab, and stored per profile so mining and PvP can centre different mains.

Setting the master seat moves a character into the master slot. It cannot move the slot itself onto another monitor — that is a layout change.

The quick way (EveDeck 1.47.0 or newer)

  1. Open the Layouts tab and click New.
  2. Pick how many seats you want, then choose Master + previews (two monitors).
  3. Set Master on to the monitor you actually play on, and Previews on to your tablet or second screen. A tablet running spacedesk shows up as an ordinary monitor here.
  4. Click Create. The master slot fills the whole play monitor and the remaining seats tile across the preview screen — so the master is unambiguously the biggest slot, by construction.
  5. Click Apply Profile.
  6. On the Clients tab, click ⭐ Master on the account you want centred at rest. That is your master seat.

That is the whole setup. Click any preview, or press its slot hotkey, and that account swaps into the master slot.

Building it by hand

Same result, more control — use this if you want the master to cover only part of a screen.

  1. Layouts tab → New → choose Even grid with one slot per account. The on-monitor editor opens.
  2. Drag each slot onto the screen it belongs on. Slots can cross monitors freely — drag one onto your tablet and it stays there.
  3. Drag the edges of the slot on your play monitor out until it is clearly the largest rectangle in the layout. This is the step that makes it the master slot.
  4. Press Enter (or click Save) to commit, then check the Layout Preview — the master rect is outlined and labelled MASTER.
  5. Click Apply Profile, then set your master seat with ⭐ Master on the Clients tab.

If the app shows a warning that no slot is clearly the biggest, the master was decided by position rather than size. Go back into the editor and enlarge the slot you want as master.

Why the built-in presets can't do this

Stacked, 1-Char, Grid, Center Master, Whammy Board, Side Stack, Twin Stack and Overlap are all built for a single monitor — they are generated from a resolution and an account count, so every slot lands on one screen. Spreading a master and its previews across two displays always means a custom profile. You can duplicate a built-in preset to get an editable copy, but the layout itself has to be custom.

Troubleshooting

  • Clicking a preview does nothing. Check Options → Previews — focus-on-click can be switched off. Hotkeys still work either way.
  • Everything renders live instead of as thumbnails. Preview mode needs live previews enabled in Options → Previews, and needs slots at two or more distinct positions. The Layouts tab states which mode the selected profile will use and why.
  • The master seat keeps changing on its own. If the account you designated isn't logged in, a running seat stands in for it so the master rect isn't left empty. That stand-in is never saved — your choice comes back on the next apply.
  • Previews are blank or garbled. Nine times out of ten this is EVE's own Prevent window preview setting. Turn it off in the EVE client's window settings.
  • Clients overlap or refuse to shrink. EVE will not run its window below roughly 1024×768. That only bites in flat mode, where each client is resized to its own slot; in preview mode every background client sits at master resolution instead.