Timeframes and custom grains
The timeframe bar offers 1m, 3m, 5m, 15m and 1H pills plus a Bar type chip where any minute value that divides the day, 15s or 30s, and count-based grains can be typed, pinned and saved as favourites.
Senzoukria · Documentation · Updated September 2026
Where to find it
- Where
- Chart toolbar → timeframe pills and the Bar type chip
- Pills
- 1m, 3m, 5m, 15m, 1H (100T on the NinjaTrader bridge only)
- Default
- 1m; an unavailable grain falls back to 1m
- Custom time grains
- 15s, 30s, and any whole number of minutes that divides 1440
- History range
- Range: 24 hours (today) by default, 3 days or 7 days
What it does
Intraday grains are derived locally from a one-minute base: a 5m footprint bar is the exact sum of its five 1m bars (per-price buy and sell volumes add, delta adds, OHLC composes). The history pipeline therefore downloads only the 1-minute window, and switching pills costs no broker request. The pill bar shows five time presets; the Bar type chip next to it always displays the current grain, whether it is a preset or a custom value like 45m, so no active timeframe is ever invisible.
The chip opens a “Bar type” popover with five families (Time, Tick, Volume, Range, Delta), preset buttons, a Custom field with a unit selector (sec, min, hour) and an Apply button (Enter). For the Time family the presets are 15s, 30s, 1m, 2m, 3m, 5m, 15m, 30m, 1h, 2h and 4h. A label typed in full (45m, 4H, T500) overrides the unit menu. Labels are normalised: 60m, 1H and “ 1h ” all become 1h, so a grain never creates two cache partitions.
The “Range” setting under History range in Footprint settings bounds how far back the chart pulls history from the broker: 24 hours (today), 3 days or 7 days, counted from midnight in the chart timezone.
Settings
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Timeframe pills | 1m | 1m, 3m, 5m, 15m, 1H. 100T appears only on the NinjaTrader bridge, whose tick counter it divides. |
| Bar type → family | Time | Time, Tick, Volume, Range or Delta. Count families are greyed with a per-source reason where the source cannot build them. |
| Custom field + unit | Empty, unit min | A number in the selected family and unit, or a full label. Invalid input shows the reason, e.g. “7m doesn’t divide the day evenly — try 6m or 8m.” |
| Pin to bar (☆/★) | Unpinned | Adds the current grain as an extra pill; right-click a pinned pill to unpin. Up to 8 pins. |
| Favourites (★ row) | Empty | Filled automatically: applying a custom grain that has no pill of its own adds it at the top of the row, most recent first. Right-click removes one. Up to 6 favourites. |
| Range (History range) | 24 hours (today) | 24 hours, 3 days or 7 days of broker history. Widening it is a real round-trip on the 1-minute feed. |
How to use it
Click a pill for the common grains. For anything else, click the chip, choose Time, type the number and pick the unit, then press Enter; the popover confirms “Enter applies 45m” before you commit. Pin a grain you use every day so it gets its own pill. The popover also states the reservation of the family shown: time grains are aligned on the epoch (UTC midnight), not on the CME session open, so a 4h here is not the CME 4h.
Valid minute values are the divisors of 1440: 2, 5, 45, 90 and so on. Below one minute only 15s and 30s exist, because the engine produces no other sub-minute grain. 1d is accepted when typed but is not proposed, since daily bars are the only grain that opens a separate OHLCV request at the broker.
Limits or pitfalls
- A grain that is valid but unavailable on the current source (for example a count grain on a bridge) is reset to 1m when the chart mounts.
- The timeframe label is the primary key of the bar cache and of history requests: two spellings of the same grain are merged on purpose.
- Derived grains are epoch-aligned; session-aligned candles are not a timeframe option.
- The 100t bridge grain is not the T100 count grain: 100t divides a counter sent by NinjaTrader, T100 accumulates trades in the engine.
Related pages
This page in other languages
Frequently asked questions
- Why is 7m refused?
- Buckets are floored on the epoch, and a period that does not divide the day (1440 minutes) would drift a little every day. The chip suggests the two nearest valid neighbours, here 6m and 8m.
- Does switching from 1m to 15m reload history?
- No. Intraday grains are summed locally from the 1-minute base already in the cache. Only the History range (24 hours, 3 days, 7 days) changes what is downloaded.
- Where did the 1D and 30s pills go?
- They were removed from the bar; the engine still understands them. Type 30s or 1d in the Bar type chip to use them, and pin the grain if you want it back as a pill.