💎 Version 6.4.0

A feature release centered on heatmaps and a new bar chart race. Heatmaps gain a continuous numeric and datetime x-axis (cells positioned by real value, not by column index), optional canvas rendering for large grids, and a tooltip that now points at the cell it describes. The bar chart race animates bars and their labels as they re-rank. Two fixes round it out. Existing configs mostly render unchanged; three heatmap defaults change (tooltip placement, zoom, and label thinning), each noted below with how to restore the previous behavior.

✨ Features

Continuous numeric and datetime x-axis for heatmaps

On a numeric or datetime heatmap, cells are now placed at their real x value instead of being tiled one per column by index. Irregular spacing and gaps therefore render as real empty space: a missing hour is a gap in the grid, not a column squeezed away, and the axis shows sparse proportional date and time ticks rather than one label per cell. Rows stay categorical (one series per row).

Canvas cell rendering for large heatmaps

With chart.renderer: 'canvas' (or 'auto' past the render threshold) and the tree-shakable canvas feature imported, heatmap cells now paint to a single canvas instead of one <rect> per cell.

Heatmap cells	SVG	canvas
10,000	95 ms	27 ms
50,000	519 ms	170 ms
100,000	1,083 ms	388 ms

import ApexCharts from 'apexcharts'
import 'apexcharts/features/renderer-canvas'

const options = {
  chart: {
    type: 'heatmap',
    renderer: 'canvas', // or 'auto' to switch above rendererThreshold
  },
  // ...series
}

Bar chart race

A reorder update now animates into a bar chart race. When you re-sort the data and update the chart, the bars slide to their new ranks and their category labels ride along automatically (whenever dynamicAnimation is on). Two opt-in flags complete the effect: dataLabels.animate rides each value label to its bar's new position, and dataLabels.countUp tweens the number from its previous value.

const options = {
  chart: {
    type: 'bar',
    animations: { dynamicAnimation: { speed: 800 } },
  },
  plotOptions: { bar: { horizontal: true } },
  dataLabels: {
    enabled: true,
    animate: { enabled: true }, // value labels ride to the new rank
    countUp: { enabled: true }, // and count up or down from the last value
  },
}
// On each frame, re-sort your data and call updateOptions with the new series
// and categories. Bars, category labels, and value labels animate to the new
// order together.

Both label flags are off by default and apply to bar and column charts. Rotated axis labels ride correctly too.

🔧 Behavior changes (heatmap defaults)

The heatmap tooltip is anchored above the cell

The heatmap tooltip now sits centered above the hovered cell with a downward arrow pointing at it, flipping below when the cell is against the top edge.

🐛 Fixes

• Light series no longer wash to white on hover. The lighten hover filter pushed already-bright fills all the way to white, so light-colored series lost their hue when hovered. The filter now preserves the color.
• dataReducer no longer mutates your data. With zoom-aware downsampling active, the reduced (windowed) view was written back into the original series array, which is shared by reference, so later re-renders started already downsampled and could never recover the full-resolution points. The reducer now operates on a detached copy, leaving your input intact.
• Custom tooltips keep their arrow. A tooltip.custom function replaced the tooltip's inner HTML, which discarded the arrow element. The arrow is now preserved across custom content, for every chart type.

TypeScript

dataLabels.animate and dataLabels.countUp (bar chart race) are typed on ApexDataLabels.

Compatibility

• No breaking API changes, and no renamed or removed options.
• Three heatmap defaults change (tooltip placement, zoom off, y-label thinning), each with a documented opt-out above.