Order book heatmap

The order book heatmap shows where limit orders wait in the book and how long they stay there. Bright bands are a lot of liquidity, often called “walls”, dark areas little. This lets you see whether a wall holds, gets pulled or is eaten through by the price.

The heatmap is part of Plus and runs on cryptocurrencies. For other symbols the entry says “… has no order book data.”

Turn it on

• Press AltM (Mac: ⌥M). The same shortcut turns it off again.
• Or Top bar → Indicators → Order flow tab → Order book heatmap → + Add.
• Or “Show order book heatmap” in the super search (CtrlK, Mac: CmdK).

The Order book heatmap row appears in the legend at the top left, with its color gradient. Double-clicking it or the gear opens the settings, and so does “Heatmap settings…” in the super search. You can undo any change there with CtrlZ (Mac: CmdZ).

How to read it

• Each column is a candle, each row a price level.
• The color is the liquidity that sat at this level on average during the candle, in dollars. An order that stood in the book for only seconds therefore barely colors the cell.
• Above the candle's close are asks (sell orders), below it bids (buy orders). Two-color schemes color the two sides differently.
• To the right of the last candle, the strong walls of the current book continue into the free area.
• When you hover over a bright band, the magnifier shows the exact amounts (see below).
• If the heatmap cannot draw anything at all, a note with the reason appears directly on the chart.

Settings

The dialog has five sections, and each setting appears in it once.

Data

Appearance

• Profile draws the current book as horizontal bars at the right edge. Both shows heatmap and profile together.
• Cross-section places the liquidity of the candle under the mouse pointer as bars to the right of that candle.
• Show values only works with the Classic style and when the candles are wide enough. Zoom in for this; the rows then get coarser so that the numbers fit.

Wall filter

An order book is densest at the price and gets thinner further out. Without a filter, almost the whole picture therefore glows and the walls get lost in it. The Wall filter shows only what stands out from the book: a cell is drawn if it holds clearly more liquidity than is usual at the same distance from the price. What remains are the walls, the clusters and orders that come and go, on a dark background as in the liquidation heatmap. The color scale then runs over these walls only.

• A wall stays visible even when the price reaches it or runs through it.
• You can recognize spoofed orders by walls that end abruptly before the price reaches them.
• With Strength you choose how far a cell has to stand out: 0% (Off) shows the whole order book, 100% only the large walls. The default is 70%.

Color scheme

All color schemes appear once in the dialog, each with its own gradient from the weakest to the brightest cell.

• Two-color · bids and asks: Strong (default: bids in mint, asks in red), Thermal, Emerald, Orchid, Arctic, Reef and Circuit. Buy orders sit below the price, sell orders above it.
• Single-color: Sunset, Cyber, Ocean, Storm, Classic, Cold, Fire and Mono. These color bids and asks the same, from dark through vivid to almost white.

Color scale

How bright a cell gets depends on two limits:

• Below the Threshold, a cell stays dark.
• From the Ceiling up, it glows fully.

The terminal calculates both automatically from the visible section and adjusts them when you pan or zoom; with the wall filter, from the walls alone. Sensitivity sets the ceiling: More lets more cells get bright, Less only the strongest.

Distribution shows as a histogram how the amounts of the cells in the visible section are distributed (with the wall filter: of the walls), with markers for threshold and ceiling. With the double slider below it or the Threshold and Ceiling fields, you set both by hand, in percent of the cells. “50% to 80%” means: the weaker half stays dark, the strongest 20% glow fully. Next to each field is the amount it currently corresponds to. Because the percentages apply, the picture stays equally bright when you zoom or pan; only the amounts change. If you choose a sensitivity again, the automatic mode takes over.

Range from and Range to zoom only the histogram and the slider, also in percent of the cells. Reset returns threshold, ceiling and range to the automatic mode and sets the sensitivity to its default.

Restore defaults at the bottom of the dialog resets everything except source, currency and resolution.

The magnifier

When you hover over a spot with liquidity, the magnifier opens next to the mouse pointer:

• seven price levels, with the one you are hovering over in the middle,
• three candles: the previous one, the one you are hovering over and the next one, with their time (for daily candles, the date),
• the amount per cell in USD or coin, colored as in the heatmap: with the wall filter, only the walls drawn in the overview have color, all other cells show their amount without color,
• at the top “Ask liquidity” if the level is above the close, otherwise “Bid liquidity”.

The magnifier combines the fine rows into somewhat coarser levels so that the numbers stay readable. It reads only what has already loaded and appears immediately. It stays off over dark areas (with the wall filter: everywhere no wall is drawn) and with the Profile appearance. You can turn it off with Magnifier in the settings.

Tips

• Layers (AltShiftL) → Saved views → Heatmap only shows the heatmap in the Classic style without the trade tape. Order flow combines it, with a profile, with CVD, open interest and funding.
• For a calmer picture: set the wall filter higher or use sensitivity Less. For individual amounts: style Classic, Show values on and zoom in.
• Order book top levels shows the largest walls of the current book with their amount, also together with the heatmap.
• The heatmap follows the exchange aggregation. Under Spot you see only the spot books, under Perps only the perpetuals.