Interact with charts

⚠️ This new version of charts is currently only available on Netdata Cloud. We didn't want to keep this valuable feature from you, so after we get this into your hands on the Cloud, we will collect and implement your feedback. Together, we will be able to provide the best possible version of charts on the Netdata Agent dashboard, as quickly as possible.

Netdata excels in collecting, storing, and organizing metrics in out-of-the-box dashboards. To make sense of all the metrics, Netdata offers an enhanced version of charts that update every second.

These charts provide a lot of useful information, so that you can:

• Enjoy the high-resolution, granular metrics collected by Netdata
• Explore visualization with more options such as line, stacked and area types (other types like bar, pie and gauges are to be added shortly)
• Examine all the metrics by hovering over them with your cursor
• Use intuitive tooling and shortcuts to pan, zoom or highlight your charts
• On highlight, ease access to Metric Correlations to see other metrics with similar patterns
• Have the dimensions sorted based on name or value
• View information about the chart, its plugin, context, and type
• Get the chart status and possible errors. On top, reload functionality

These charts will available on Overview tab, Single Node view and on your Custom Dashboards.

Overview

Have a look at the can see the overall look and feel of the charts for both with a composite chart from the Overview tab and a simple chart from the single node view:

With a quick glance you have immediate information available at your disposal:

• Chart title and units
• Action bars
• Chart area
• Legend with dimensions

Play, Pause and Reset

Your charts are controlled using the available Time controls. Besides these, when interacting with the chart you can also activate these controls by:

• hovering over any chart to temporarily pause it - this momentarily switches time control to Pause, so that you can hover over a specific timeframe. When moving out of the chart time control will go back to Play (if it was it's previous state)

• clicking on the chart to lock it - this enables the Pause option on the time controls, to the current timeframe. This is if you want to jump to a different chart to look for possible correlations.

• double clicking to release a previously locked chart - move the time control back to Play

  

Interaction	Keyboard/mouse	Touchpad/touchscreen	Time control
Pause a chart	hover	n/a	Temporarily Pause
Stop a chart	click	tap	Pause
Reset a chart	double click	n/a	Play

Note: These interactions are available when the default "Pan" action is used. Other actions are accessible via the Exploration action bar.

Title and chart action bar

When you start interacting with a chart, you'll notice valuable information on the top bar. You will see information from the chart title to a chart action bar.

The elements that you can find on this top bar are:

• Netdata icon: this indicates that data is continuously being updated, this happens if Time controls are in Play or Force Play mode
• Chart status icon: indicates the status of the chart. Possible values are: Loading, Timeout, Error or No data
• Chart title: on the chart title you can see the title together with the metric being displayed, as well as the unit of measurement
• Chart action bar: here you'll have access to chart info, change chart types, enables fullscreen mode, and the ability to add the chart to a custom dashboard

Chart action bar

On this bar you have access to immediate actions over the chart, the available actions are:

• Chart info: you will be able to get more information relevant to the chart you are interacting with
• Chart type: change the chart type from line, stacked or area
• Enter fullscreen mode: allows you expand the current chart to the full size of your screen
• Add chart to dashboard: This allows you to add the chart to an existing custom dashboard or directly create a new one that includes the chart.

Exploration action bar

When exploring the chart you will see a second action bar. This action bar is there to support you on this task. The available actions that you can see are:

• Pan
• Highlight
• Horizontal and Vertical zooms
• In-context zoom in and out

Pan

Drag your mouse/finger to the right to pan backward through time, or drag to the left to pan forward in time. Think of it like pushing the current timeframe off the screen to see what came before or after.

Interaction	Keyboard	Mouse	Touchpad/touchscreen
Pan	n/a	click + drag	touch drag

Highlight

Selecting timeframes is useful when you see an interesting spike or change in a chart and want to investigate further, from looking at the same period of time on other charts/sections or triggering actions to help you troubleshoot with an in-context action bar to help you troubleshoot (currently only available on Single Node view). The available actions:

• run Metric Correlations
• zoom in on the selected timeframe

Metric Correlations will only be available if you respect the timeframe selection limitations. The selected duration pill together with the button state helps visualize this.

Interaction	Keyboard/mouse	Touchpad/touchscreen
Highlight a specific timeframe	Alt + mouse selection or ⌘ + mouse selection (macOS)	n/a

Zoom

Zooming in helps you see metrics with maximum granularity, which is useful when you're trying to diagnose the root cause of an anomaly or outage. Zooming out lets you see metrics within the larger context, such as the last hour, day, or week, which is useful in understanding what "normal" looks like, or to identify long-term trends, like a slow creep in memory usage.

The actions above are normal vertical zoom actions. We also provide an horizontal zoom action that helps you focus on a specific Y-axis area to further investigate a spike or dive on your charts.

Interaction	Keyboard/mouse	Touchpad/touchscreen
Zoom in or out	Shift + mouse scrollwheel	two-finger pinch Shift + two-finger scroll
Zoom to a specific timeframe	Shift + mouse vertical selection	n/a
Horizontal Zoom a specific Y-axis area	Shift + mouse horizontal selection	n/a

You also have two direct action buttons on the exploration action bar for in-context Zoom in and Zoom out.

Other interactions

Order dimensions legend

The bottom legend of the chart where you can see the dimensions of the chart can now be ordered by:

• Dimension name (Ascending or Descending)
• Dimension value (Ascending or Descending)

Show and hide dimensions

Hiding dimensions simplifies the chart and can help you better discover exactly which aspect of your system might be behaving strangely.

Interaction	Keyboard/mouse	Touchpad/touchscreen
Show one dimension and hide others	click	tap
Toggle (show/hide) one dimension	Shift + click	n/a

Resize

To resize the chart, click-and-drag the icon on the bottom-right corner of any chart. To restore the chart to its original height, double-click the same icon.

What's next?

We recommend you read up on the differences between chart dimensions, contexts, and families to strengthen your understanding of how Netdata organizes its dashboards. Another valuable way to interact with charts is to use the date and time controls, which helps you visualize specific moments of historical metrics.

Further reading & related information

• Dashboard
  • How the dashboard works
  • Chart dimensions, contexts, and families
  • Date and Time controls
  • Customize the standard dashboard
  • Metric Correlations
  • Netdata Agent - Interact with charts