Time scale
Choose between a bar-indexed axis and a time-continuous axis that shows market gaps.
Bar-indexed by default
By default the horizontal axis is bar-indexed: every candle takes one bar width, and time gaps collapse. This is how TradingView and lightweight-charts lay out bars. It suits 24/7 crypto, but for session-based markets it puts Friday's close right next to Monday's open, and a feed outage leaves no visible hole.
Time-continuous mode
chart.updateConfig({ timeScale: { continuous: true } });With timeScale.continuous: true, each candle sits in the slot of its timestamp:
slot = round((time - firstTime) * 1000 / intervalMs)Weekends, halts, and missing candles then show as empty space. Every candle keeps a slot of its own even if two timestamps round to the same one.
| Field | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
timeScale.continuous | false | Lay candles out by time |
timeScale.intervalMs | null | Slot width in milliseconds. null, zero, negative, or non-finite values infer it as the most common gap between consecutive candles |
Set intervalMs when you know it. The paging datafeed sets it on every load. The bar-close countdown also uses it when timeAxis.intervalMs is null, so the first bar after a weekend never reads as a multi-day bar.
Switching modes keeps the rightmost visible bar in place. Slots are rebuilt when data is replaced and extended in constant time on a live tail append (unless that append changes an inferred interval), never per frame. The bar-indexed path costs nothing extra.
The settings card exposes the mode as Time-continuous axis under Scales.
What changes in continuous mode
- Scrolling and zoom are measured in slots.
scale.scrollBy(n)movesnslots,scale.barSpacing()is pixels per slot, andscale.priceToBarRatio()is scale units per slot. - Paging through gaps wider than the viewport moves by the viewport and never skips candles. The toolbar's arrows and SmoothScroll use
scale.visibleSlots(), the viewport in scroll units counted from the first candle. - Time axis labels are placed by slot, so a gap is still labelled; labels inside it carry interpolated times.
- Autoscale and the high/low references use only candles inside the viewport. When a gap fills the whole viewport, the two candles around it frame the range.
- Lines (line and area series, indicator lines) connect across a gap, including at the viewport's edges.
Limitations: indices stay bar-based
Continuous mode changes where candles are drawn, not how they are addressed. Everything that takes a position still uses candle indices:
scale.visibleRange(),scrollTo(index),zoomToRange(from, to),indexToX(index), andxToIndex(x)take or return candle indices.xToIndexinside a gap returns a fractional index between its two candles.- Drawing points are
{ index, price }. A point placed inside a gap stores a fractional index, so it stays between the same two candles when the layout changes. - Indicators compute per candle, not per slot: a 20-period SMA spans 20 candles, however much time that is.
- Indices beyond the data, such as Ichimoku's forward-displaced spans or points in the whitespace after the last bar, extend one slot per bar.
- Timestamps never become positions directly. To place something at a time, find the candle index for that time in your own data.
Use computeTimeSlots(candles, intervalMs?) and inferIntervalMs(candles) to reproduce the layout in your own code.