Fit & Setup Guide

Read this before you unbox anything. It takes about three minutes and it is the difference between a setup that works the first time and a return.

Your desk decides almost everything here. Not the brand of it, not what it cost — three measurements. Take them now, while the parcel is still in transit, and you will know it fits before you open a single bag.

Part one: three measurements

You need a tape measure and about two minutes. Write the numbers down somewhere you will find them again.

1. How thick is the desktop at the back edge?

Measure the top surface down to the underside, at the back edge where the tray will hang. Not at the front, and not at a leg — desks are often thicker where they meet a frame.

This is the number that decides whether the clamps close. The clamp range for your tray is printed on its product page and on the packaging; check yours against it before you unbox.

2. How much clear run is there under the back edge?

Stand behind the desk and look underneath. Measure the uninterrupted horizontal space along the back edge — from the first obstruction on the left to the first one on the right.

Obstructions are usually a leg, a cross-brace, a cable channel, or the motor housing on a standing desk. The tray needs to sit in that clear run, so this number tells you whether the fixed tray fits or whether you want the expandable one.

3. Is the back edge actually open?

This is a yes or no, and it is the one people skip.

The clamps hook over the back edge from above and tighten from below. That means the edge has to be reachable from both sides. It is not open if your desk has:

a modesty panel that sits flush with the top surface
a lip or return that runs the full width of the back
a built-in cable tray already occupying the edge
a back rail on a gaming desk that rises above the desktop

If any of those is true at the back, check the sides. On plenty of desks the left or right edge is open and works just as well — the tray does not care which edge it hangs from, only that it can hook over one.

Part two: which tray size

Use measurement 2.

Fixed 15.7" — the right choice when your clear run is comfortably over 16 inches and you are storing a normal power strip plus a couple of chargers. It is more rigid because there is no telescoping joint.
Expandable 15.7–29" — the right choice on a wide desk, a standing desk, or any setup where the power strip, the laptop brick and a hub all need to live in there. Also the safer pick if your measurement came out awkward, since it adjusts after it is mounted.

When you are between the two, take the expandable one. Nobody has ever regretted having spare room under the desk.

Part three: set it up in this order

The order genuinely matters. Each step decides where the next one goes, and doing it backwards means undoing it.

Step 1 — Pad first, before anything is mounted

Lay the desk pad where you actually work and put the keyboard and mouse on it. This is not decoration: it fixes where your hands live, which decides where the hooks go and which end of the desk the cables should run to. Give it a few hours to relax flat if it arrived rolled.

Step 2 — Clamp the tray

Hook the two arms over the back edge so they sit flush against the top, then turn the thumbscrews up against the underside. Hand-tight is the target — you are holding weight from below, not squeezing the desk. Stop when they stop.

Put it roughly behind where the power strip currently sits on the floor. You want the shortest possible run from the tray to the wall outlet.

Step 3 — Bundle the slack, then load

Do this in your hands, before anything goes in the tray. Take each cable, gather the excess into a loop about the width of your palm, and put a tie around it. Every cable, including the ones that look short.

Then lay the power strip in the tray and the bundled cables beside it. A tray loaded with tied bundles stays tidy for years. A tray loaded with loose slack is a nest within a month, and you will never open it again to fix it.

Step 4 — Clamp the hooks

Sit down first. Let your hand drop naturally off the side of the desk — that spot, and nowhere else, is where the first hook goes. It is the one you will use every single day, so it should be reachable without leaning.

Put the second hook further along, wherever a bag can hang without touching the floor or your leg.

Step 5 — Deal with the cable ends

The last problem is the ones that come back up: the phone cable, the charger, the headset lead. Left alone they slide off and disappear behind the desk, and you fish for them every morning.

Route them so they sit against the edge near where you use them, and secure the ends with the organiser so they stay where you put them.

Step 6 — Look at it from the front

Stand where you would see the desk when you walk into the room. You are looking for one thing: a single cable running to the wall. If you can see more than that, something is still routed over the top of the desk instead of through the tray. Fix it now, while everything is still fresh in your hands.

If something does not fit

Tell us before you wrestle with it. Email us with a photo of your desk edge and the three measurements you took, and we will tell you straight whether it can work — sometimes the answer is moving to a side edge, and sometimes the honest answer is that your desk is not compatible.

Either way you have 60 days from the day it arrives to send it back, you do not need the original box, and you do not have to explain why.

When you move desks

Nothing here is drilled and nothing is glued, which is the entire point. Loosen the thumbscrews, lift everything off, and the old desk has no marks and no holes to explain to a landlord.

On the new desk, start again at Part one. It takes three minutes and it is the same three measurements.