Giga Certainty

TWS + API: Quick Installation & Setup

A brief overview to help you install and set up TWS and its API.

For full instructions, please refer to IBKR’s official TWS and API setup guide. We strongly recommend consulting IBKR’s customer support for the most accurate guidance — see How to Access IB Live Chat Support.

For TWS, download the online version. Do not use the offline version (which IBKR may recommend), as we always use TWS, TWS API, and our Excel tool for real-time trading.
If you applied for your IB account in Hong Kong (IBHK), IBKR recommends using IB Gateway instead of TWS. Learn more about IB Gateway on this page.
Unfortunately, Mac users cannot use our Excel tool to retrieve market data via TWS API. According to IBKR, the Excel functionality of TWS API is not available in the Mac and Unix versions.
Be sure to follow all other notes in IBKR’s official TWS and API setup guide to ensure installation is done properly.

Make sure to check “Enable ActiveX and Socket Clients” and “Read-Only API”. This will allow our Excel tool to retrieve data from TWS API while preventing any accidental changes or commands from being sent to TWS.

For other settings, in most cases, the default values can be kept.
For detailed TWS settings, refer to IBKR’s official TWS and API setup guide, but we strongly recommend making these changes with assistance from IBKR Customer Support.

Notes:

While this page is designed to walk you through the installation and setup of TWS and TWS API:

Giga Certainty does not offer technical support for third-party platforms or software (e.g., IBKR, YouTube, Microsoft Excel, Adobe PDF).
Our Sites and tools are regularly updated for functionality, but platform-specific issues should be directed to the official provider.
All content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Disclaimer:

Giga Certainty is not a financial advisor.

All information provided is for educational purposes only, and does not constitute financial advice.

Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

We do not offer technical support.

While we routinely maintain our website, videos, and member tools to ensure proper functionality,

any issues related to third-party platforms or software—including Interactive Brokers, YouTube, Microsoft Excel, Adobe PDF, and others

—should be directed to the respective service providers.

This site is not a part of Google or Google.com, nor is it sponsored or endorsed by Google. YouTube is a trademark of Google.