Using Tradovate’s Spotlight Search Feature

What is Tradovate’s Spotlight Search Feature?

Spotlight is a Tradovate feature that allows you to search for a wide variety of commands and other features from the Tradovate Trader application instantly. Just about any feature in the Trader application is at the tips of your fingers when using Spotlight. Each feature type has an icon to go with it, so you can tell at a glance what type of resource you are interacting with.

To open Spotlight Search in Trader, press ALT+S on Windows, or OPTION+S on Mac.

When you begin typing in the search box, suggestions will begin to appear in a drop-down list.

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Quickly Find Quote Information

You can search for quote information by typing a symbol name, or the full name of a stock you’re interested in. Below you can see what the term ‘nasdaq’ yields. Search results for quote information are sorted by relevance - this means we will see the most current contracts listed first. Quotes are identified by the Info ‘i’ icon.

Easily Find Articles and Walkthroughs

We can ask the Spotlight search bar questions, such as ‘how to roll forward?’, or ‘how do I use market replay?’. Searches such as these will yield FAQs and walk-me guides. You can identify an FAQ by the ‘Z’ icon, and walk-me guides by the man-walking icon.

Walk-me guides are a way to interactively step through the process of a given task. The best way to understand them is to try them out!

Configure Indicators and Custom Drawing Tools

We can search for our favorite tools using Spotlight, as well. Both drawing tools and indicators can be searched for - look for the ‘+’ or cog icons for indicators (there are also some novel icons for built-in indicators). Built-in drawing tools will have icons relative to their function, while custom drawing tools have no icon.

Find Community Topics and Shared Content

You can find posts to the Tradovate community forums using Spotlight as well. You can identify these pages by their speech-bubble-like icons.

You can also find shared content, such as indicators, drawing tools, themes and workspaces developed by other traders. Shared content items have the ‘share’ icon and a right-aligned author by-line, as shown in the figure below.

Trader Actions

You can jump to specific Trader application actions as well. These will typically have the Settings icon and be followed by the right-aligned subtitle ‘App’.

Other Features

There are a few other features Spotlight Search has to offer.

If the location of the Spotlight search bar isn’t ideal you can simply move it. Just click and drag the search bar to a new location.

You can click the Search the Tradovate YouTube to search your query against the Tradovate YouTube channels, and if all else fails, you can search your query against the web using Google.

Check Out Spotlight Today

Although it’s a lesser known feature, Spotlight Search is available for use right now. You can take advantage of this feature today and empower your Tradovate Trader experience. Spotlight can really make your life a lot easier - it’s a one-stop window into just about everything the Trader application has to offer. Try it today!

To Alexander: Fantastic short cut! the AT+S to popop to search the site! I will keep monitoring this community website as long as you and people like Bastiaan Smit keep informing the autodidactic users like myself. I am isolated and without any formal computer training- working by imagination, sweat, and trial and error, but I am mindful and creative. Do not underestimate us old guys that are independent users. I humbly want and use all the help I can get with suggestions to make leaps in productive use of my time on this platform. Best to you and everyone on the site. :slight_smile:
Addiionally I want to encourage you: if U have some posting specials or actual help suggestions to begin to learn to code and hack code on the platform for me and others to use- for example how explicit curious tricks as how the Tradovate Java coding interacts in ways with JavaScript coding, I would appreciate " a learners-beginners map type guide" : for example on TOS it took yet another year to find out that there is an unsupported and undocumented way to add any lower chart above a price chart so you can see in real time -for instance- how the 'mother of all futures contract-/ES trades side by side with the /NQ from any type of Bar,Candle chart your want- since the /ES is the mother and /NQ is the “crazy kid” that sometimes leads and sometimes follows , it’s useful to know how they are both behaving without having to look into 2 separate windows before you “step into the house”-to complete the metaphor- before you start trading! Yet all but the most ingenious traders are even aware that this options exists on TOS because supposedly it is not supported… but there is a secret hack! That’s what I mean about developing edge… and it means being on the edge away from herd mentality- Kierkegaard " Where their is a crowd, there is Unturth"- it is harsh but the generalization holds some weight in and of itself.

2023-05-14T07:00:00Z In conclusion: If you have some special Tradovate Editor manual that you can point me to please do so. On the ThinkorSwim platform it was over 1 year until some thoughtful soul actually pointed out the Editor manual that ThinkorSwim published… the Usethinkscript.com community never, never pointed it out to new visitors in their intellectual hubris… I do not expect any intelligent trader to share their Edge in trading (that would be shooting yourself in the foot-let’s face it)… But that does not mean that I do not intend to exchange tips and short cuts in the learning process to self mastery in navigating the Tradovate site and designing a GUI that is intentional for Me and customized for Me:
My premise is Q. What do I really want to see? Q.Does the particular indicator I am using help me see it or not? If it doesn’t then I keep going. That is the criteria I set for myself with all this platform stuff. I try to keep it “where the rubber meets the road”- emphasis on Price action, and the digitalized signals I can get the platform to print out on the chart, that interest me and hopefully work for me. I should think every user has a similar view.
Best to all …