Using the chart: timeframes, chart types and scales

The chart is where you will spend most of your time. These basics make it comfortable to use every day.

Moving around

• Drag the chart sideways to travel through history; older bars load as you reach the edge.
• Zoom with the mouse wheel, or pinch on a touch screen.
• Drag the price scale up or down to stretch or squeeze the prices; double-click it to return to automatic scaling.
• Lost your place? Use the arrow at the bottom right to jump back to the latest bar, or right-click and choose "Reset chart view".
• "Go to date" in the right-click menu takes you straight to a specific day.
• The calendar button beside the quick ranges at the bottom left does the same.

Timeframes

Every plan includes 1, 5, 15 and 30-minute, 1, 2, 4 and 12-hour, daily, weekly and monthly bars. Starter and higher plans add 10 and 30-second bars and timeframes you define yourself. Star the ones you use most and they stay in the toolbar.

Tick charts (Pro)

Besides time, a bar can close after a set number of trades: choose 1T, 10T, 100T or 1000T under Ticks in the timeframe menu. Busy moments produce many bars and quiet ones few, so bursts of activity stand out. The time axis shows when each bar's first trade happened. Tick charts work on crypto pairs from Binance, Bybit, OKX and Coinbase, spot and perpetual. A tick chart starts empty when you open it and fills as trades arrive; earlier trades are not loaded.

Range bars (Starter)

Range bars close once price has moved a set distance, however long that takes: choose 1R, 10R, 100R or 1000R under Ranges in the timeframe menu. One R is the smallest price step the price scale shows, so 100R on Bitcoin is $1. Every finished bar spans exactly that range, which filters out time and noise. Like tick charts, they work on crypto pairs from Binance, Bybit, OKX and Coinbase, start empty and fill as trades arrive.

Chart types

Choose from 13 styles: Candles, Bars, Hollow candles, Heikin Ashi, Line, Area, Baseline, Columns, Step line, Line with markers, High-Low, Volume candles and HLC area.

Reading a candle

Each candle shows the open, high, low and close of one period. By default a green candle closed higher than it opened and a red one closed lower; you can pick your own colours in Chart settings. The values of the bar under your cursor appear at the top left, next to the symbol name.

Volume

Volume bars along the bottom show how much traded in each period. A move on strong volume carries more weight than one on thin volume.

The price scale

Right-click the price scale to open its menu:

• Auto (fits the data to the screen), Logarithmic, Percent, Indexed to 100 or Regular
• Invert scale
• Which lines and labels to show: last price line, previous day close, high and low, the countdown to the bar close and more
• Move the scale to the left or right

Logarithmic scale is useful on long histories where the price has multiplied many times.

Data window and keyboard shortcuts

Right-click the chart and choose Data window to see every value of the bar under the cursor in one list: open, high, low, close, change, volume and each indicator on the chart and in the panels below. Keyboard shortcuts, in the same menu or with Ctrl + / (⌘ + / on a Mac), lists every shortcut the chart understands. Right-click the price scale for two more options: Lock price to bar ratio keeps the chart's shape when you zoom, and Scale price chart only fits the axis to the price alone.

The data window floats: drag it by its title, resize it from its bottom-right corner, and double-click the title to put it back beside the price scale; Alt + D opens and closes it. The shortcuts follow TradingView's own list, from Alt + T for a trend line to Tab between charts in a multi-chart layout, and Ctrl + K (⌘ + K) opens Quick search, where you can type the name of any command or drawing tool and run it. In the shortcuts list the pencil beside a chart or page shortcut records new keys (a single letter or digit stays for typing a symbol or an interval, and keys another shortcut uses are refused); the arrow beside it brings the default back. Your keys stay on this device.

Time zone

The clock at the bottom right shows the chart's time zone. Click it to choose a city or keep your device's local time. The time axis, the crosshair and bar times all follow your choice, including daylight-saving changes.

Handy right-click actions

• Copy the price under the cursor
• Set a price alert at that level
• Add a horizontal line
• Download the chart's data (Pro)