EveDeckEveDeckReadme
SETUP AND TROUBLESHOOTING

Readme

Everything you need to configure and run EveDeck.

What is this?

EveDeck is a Windows window manager built for EVE Online multiboxing. It assigns your EVE client windows to fixed account seats, arranges them with resolution-independent layout profiles, and lets you jump between clients with system-wide hotkeys or by clicking a live preview — without ever sending input into an EVE client.

Preview mode shows your background clients as real-time thumbnails — drawn by Windows' own DWM thumbnail API, so the OS compositor does the work rather than EveDeck — around the master client, which fills the center, so switching between accounts is instant: the windows never actually move or resize until you commit a swap. An optional GPU capture backend is available on the Previews tab if you want sharper tiles at small sizes.

Requirements

  • Windows 10/11, 64-bit. Windows only — there is no macOS or Linux build, and running under Wine or Proton is not supported.
  • EVE Online clients in windowed or borderless mode (not true exclusive fullscreen).
  • At least 2 characters recommended; best with 4 or more.

Getting started

  1. Download and unzip the latest release, then run EveDeck.exe.
  2. In the Options tab, click Run setup wizard to link your EVE accounts via ESI (for portraits and character names) and walk through your first layout — or set things up manually with the steps below.
  3. In the Clients tab, pick a detected EVE window on the left and click Assign next to the slot you want it to use. Auto-Assign All matches every unassigned window to an empty slot in one click.
  4. In the Layouts tab, pick the Grid or Center Master profile, choose your monitor resolution and account count from the dropdowns, then click Apply.
  5. In the Previews tab, check Enable live previews for live thumbnail previews of your background clients. Everything else about how previews look — the active frame, labels, tiles, the inactive-client border, and which non-EVE apps may appear as a preview — lives on that tab too.
  6. Use hotkeys to switch clients without touching the mouse: Ctrl+Alt+1 through Ctrl+Alt+N focus a slot, Ctrl+Alt+A re-applies the active layout, and Ctrl+Alt+M swaps the focused client into the master seat. Full bindings are editable in the Hotkeys tab.

Beyond the basics

  • Profile Sync tab: pick one character's settings as the source, check any number of alts as targets, and click Copy — both the per-character and per-account settings files are copied, so window layout and UI are identical across every client. Originals are timestamped and backed up first.
  • Non-EVE previews: in Previews → Preview non-EVE apps, allow an application by process name and it starts appearing as a detected, assignable window like any EVE client — so Discord, a browser or a spreadsheet can sit in a corner tile alongside your pilots.
  • Character Sets and Launch Groups: keep multiple named rosters (e.g. a mining fleet and a combat fleet) and switch between them without re-linking accounts. Launch opens the EVE Launcher once per character in the active set, spaced by a configurable delay.
  • Multi-monitor custom profiles: built-in families (Grid, Center Master, etc.) each target one monitor. To span two or more monitors, build a custom profile with the on-monitor editor and drag slots onto any connected display — one profile then drives the whole desktop. Don't have a spare monitor? A phone or tablet connected over USB and running a screen-extension app (e.g. SuperDisplay, unaffiliated with EveDeck) shows up to Windows as a normal display.
  • Game-event alerts: in the Options tab, enable alerts to flash a seat and play a sound on in-game combat/aggression events read from EVE's gamelog.

Troubleshooting

  • A window isn't showing up in Detected Windows: click Refresh in the Clients tab — minimized windows and windows already assigned elsewhere won't appear.
  • No live previews: confirm Enable live previews is checked in thePreviews tab (it moved there from Options in 1.50.0). If you have switched on GPU capture and tiles look wrong, turn it back off — DWM thumbnails are the default and the more forgiving path.
  • Layout looks off on a VSR/DSR virtual resolution: set a Master resolution override on the profile in the Layouts tab to match EVE's Fixed Window resolution.
  • Hotkeys not working: gated hotkeys only fire while an EVE client is the foreground window — check for a conflicting binding in the Hotkeys tab, and run EveDeck as admin if EVE is running as admin.
  • Game-event alerts never fire: update to 1.45.0 or later. Earlier builds read EVE's gamelogs with the wrong text encoding, so no alert rule could ever match and the feature was silently doing nothing.
  • EveDeck says an update is out but nothing happens: that is expected — from 1.55.0 EveDeck only tells you and opens the download page. Grab the new zip or installer yourself. Microsoft Store installs are updated by the Store instead.

Supporting EveDeck

EveDeck is free and open source under the GPL-3.0, with no paywall and no feature held back for a paid tier. If it has earned a spot in your setup, ISK donations are welcome in-game to the corporation EveDeck.Space [EDECK] — never required, always appreciated, and nothing in EveDeck changes either way.