Chart Mode Chooser

Chart Mode Chooser

Choose a chart by the question you want the dashboard to answer. Follow the mode link for setup details and YAML.

I want to…	Recommended mode	Best suited to	Entity guidance
Plot one or more values over time	Timeline	Temperature, power, humidity, prices, counters	One or more entities
Show open, high, low, and close per bucket	Candlestick — Timeline mode, graph_type: candlestick per entity	Price ranges or any bucketed variation	One or more numeric entities
Compare one value against another	Scatter	Correlation between two sensors	Exactly two entities
Show each entity's share of a total	Pie	Energy use, category proportions	One or more entities
Rank entities from highest to lowest	Ranking	Appliance consumption or room comparisons	One or more entities
See value intensity by day and hour	Heatmap	Occupancy, usage, temperature patterns	One entity
See values in a weekly calendar grid	Calendar	Daily totals and long-range patterns	One entity
Compare progress within individual ranges	Radial Bar	Targets, percentages, normalized sensors	One or more entities with bounds
Show live values on needle dials	Gauge	Current temperature, pressure, battery, speed	One or more entities with useful bounds
Compare magnitudes around a circle	Polar Area	Category comparisons where radius matters	One or more entities
Compare several dimensions as a profile	Radar	Multi-metric room or device profiles	At least three entities
Show categorical state changes over time	State Timeline	HVAC modes, occupancy, alarms, media activity	One or more state entities
Show a distribution's min, quartiles, median, and max	Box Plot	Daily temperature spread or variability	One or more dense numeric series
Explain positive and negative contributions to a total	Waterfall	Budgets, energy balance, import/export	One or more additive/subtractive entities
Show how often values fall into ranges	Histogram	Frequency distributions	One or more numeric entities

Still unsure?

• Start with Timeline for ordinary history.
• Use State Timeline for non-numeric states.
• Check the compatibility matrix before combining a mode with axes, zoom, scrolling, offsets, or annotations.
• Browse the Example Finder for configurations organized by goal.
• Switching modes is cheap to try. Since v3.32 the visual editor hides the options a mode cannot use, down to the individual field — a section heading disappears once everything under it is hidden, a tab once all of its sections are, and you are moved to the first surviving tab. Nothing is deleted: a hidden option keeps its YAML value and comes back when you switch to a mode that uses it.

---

Related pages

• Chart Modes
• Example Finder
• Examples
• Configuration
• ↑ Back to top