What it draws
The Highlighter is a freehand tool that paints a wide, semi-transparent stroke over the chart, similar to a marker pen on paper. Because it is translucent, the bars and indicators underneath remain fully visible.
How to draw it
- Pick Highlighter from the left toolbar (Brushes group).
- Click and hold, then drag across the area you want to emphasize; release to finish the stroke. Draw multiple passes for separate highlighted regions.
How traders use it
- Sweep across a cluster of high-volume bars to flag where institutional activity likely occurred.
- Highlight the stretch of bars inside a trading session or news window you want to review later.
- Mark a sequence of higher lows in an uptrend so the structure stands out in a journal screenshot.
Settings reference
Double-click the drawing (or use its floating toolbar → gear) to open settings:
| Setting | Control | Possible values | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smoothing | number | 0–20 | 3 | How strongly the freehand stroke is smoothed as you draw — higher values round out jitter. |
| Color | color | any color (theme color picker) | #05B878 | Color of the highlighter stroke. |
| Line Width | select | 1px | 2px | 3px | 4px | 2px | Stroke thickness of the drawing’s lines and outlines. |
| Line Style | select | Solid | Dashed | Dotted | Solid | Dash pattern used for the drawing’s lines. |
| Opacity % | slider | 5–100 | 30 | Opacity of the wide translucent highlighter stroke. |
| [Tab] Text — Text | checkbox + textarea | on/off, with a multiline text box for the label content | off (on when the drawing already carries text) | Enables an attached text label on the drawing; typing in the box auto-enables it and updates the label live. |
| [Tab] Text — Text Color | color | any color | same as the drawing’s line color | Color of the attached text label. |
| [Tab] Text — Font Size | select | 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 48, 64, 72 | 14 | Point size of the attached label text. |
| [Tab] Text — Bold | checkbox | on/off (B toggle button) | off | Renders the label in bold. |
| [Tab] Text — Italic | checkbox | on/off (I toggle button) | off | Renders the label in italics. |
| [Tab] Text — Word Wrap | checkbox | on/off | off | Wraps long label text onto multiple lines instead of one long line. |
| [Tab] Text — Text alignment (vertical) | select | Top | Middle | Bottom | Top | Vertical placement of the label relative to the drawing. |
| [Tab] Text — Text alignment (horizontal) | select | Left | Center | Right | Center | Horizontal placement of the label relative to the drawing. |
| [Tab] Coordinates | number + datetime | one row per anchor point: price (number, step 0.05) and local date/time | the drawing’s current anchor values | Edits anchor geometry numerically — changing a point’s price or time moves the drawing live on the chart. |
| [Tab] Visibility | checkbox + number range | interval buckets: Ticks; Seconds 1–59; Minutes 1–59; Hours 1–24; Days 1–366; Weeks 1–52; Months 1–12; Ranges (each bucket has an on/off checkbox, most also a from–to range) | visible on all intervals | Per-timeframe visibility rules — untick a bucket to hide the drawing on those chart resolutions, or narrow the from–to range within a bucket. |
Editing & managing
- Move / adjust: drag the drawing or any anchor handle; magnet mode snaps points to OHLC values.
- Clone / lock / hide / delete from the floating toolbar or right-click menu.
- Templates: save the current style from the settings dialog and reapply it to new drawings.
- Every action is undoable (⌘Z / Ctrl+Z).
Watch out for
- Overlapping highlighter strokes stack their transparency and can become dark enough to obscure the price action you were trying to emphasize.