Zooming

Highcharts Core

Zooming in Highcharts can be enabled on the X axes or Y axes separately. The chart.zooming.type option is set to either "x", "y" or "xy".

With a mouse pointer, the zooming is performed by dragging out a rectangle in the chart. If the chart.panKey is set, the user can press that key and drag the mouse in order to pan. Otherwise, the user can't pan the zoomed area but has to zoom out then in again on a new area.

When zooming, a button appears that lets the user zoom out. Programmatically, the Chart.zoomOut function can be used to the same effect.

On touch devices, the user can zoom by pinching in the chart area. On these devices, the user may also move the zoomed area by panning with one finger across the chart.

The Y axes do not scale to zoomed areas by default like X axes do. This behavior will become active, when the axis options startOnTick and endOnTick are set to false.

Since v11.1, mouse wheel zooming is available through the zooming.mouseWheel option set. It requires a separate module file for Highcharts Core, but is bundled in Highcharts Stock.

Highcharts Stock

In Highcharts Stock, we also have the Navigator, Range Selector, and Scrollbar to ease navigation, so zooming is disabled by default. Instead, panning is enabled so that moving the zoomed area is easier. 

On touch devices, both zooming and panning are enabled through the chart.zooming.pinchType option, which defaults to "x".

Mouse wheel zooming is enabled in Highcharts Stock by default since v11.1.