Sessions and heatmaps
Browse visits, open a session to see the journey and replay, and read click, scroll and attention heatmaps.
Sessions show you what individual visitors did. Heatmaps show you what all visitors did on one page.
The session list
Open Sessions in the sidebar. The list is titled "Recent sessions" and shows, for the selected time range:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Started / Last seen | When the session began and when it was last active |
| Visitor | The first 8 characters of the anonymous visitor id |
| Pageviews / Events | How much happened |
| Frustration | A badge when the visitor showed frustration (hover for the breakdown, for example "3 rage · 1 dead · 1 U-turn") |
| Duration | Time spent |
| Entry / Exit | First and last page |
| Source | Channel plus source and medium |
| Device | Mobile or Desktop |
| Location | Country and city |
The list loads 50 sessions at a time. Sessions you have already opened are shown dimmed.
A session is one browser tab: opening your site in a new tab starts a new session.
Filters
The Filters bar narrows the list. The filters stay in the page URL, so you can share or bookmark a filtered view.
- Pages viewed, Duration (s) and Events, each with a min and max.
- Viewed page: sessions that visited a given path.
- Device: All, Desktop or Mobile.
- Country.
- Source: All sources, Direct, Organic Search, Paid, Social, Referral, Email or Other.
- Frustration only.
Clear resets everything.
Finding the sessions that went wrong
Turn on Frustration only and sort through the badges. Rage clicks (3 or more clicks on the same element within 1.5 seconds), dead clicks, error clicks, U-turns (visitor goes A to B and straight back to A in under 5 seconds) and rage scrolls are all detected automatically. Rage, dead and error clicks need click autocapture. See Track events.
The session detail
Click a row to open Session detail. At the top you see the visitor id and, if your site called identify, the distinctId. Previous and Next move through the sessions of your current filtered list.
The page contains:
- Session replay: a video-like replay of the visit, shown only when a recording exists. See below.
- A stat strip: Time spent, Pageviews, Events, Location, Device, Started.
- AI summary (Pro only): a short summary of the session, the visitor's probable intent, a friction score from 0 to 100 (Smooth, Some friction, High friction) and up to 6 friction points. It is generated when you ask for it and saved after the first run. Free sites see an Upgrade to Pro button instead.
- Journey: the pages visited in order, with wider bars for pages where the visitor spent more time.
- Event timeline: what happened, in order. It shows the most recent 100 events of the session.
Session replay
The replay player has speed controls (1×, 2×, 4×, 8×) and a Skip idle toggle. The timeline carries markers for clicks, pageviews and the frustration signals: rage click, dead click, error click and rage scroll.
Good to know:
- Replay needs the
replayoption to be on. With the script tag it is on by default. With the npm package, setreplay: true. See Install the tracker. - Text you type in form fields is masked, and password, email and phone fields are always masked. Other page text is not masked unless you mark the element. See Privacy and consent.
- Recording pauses after 5 minutes without activity and resumes on the next interaction. A single session is recorded for at most 30 minutes.
- Images and fonts are not stored: they load from your live site at playback.
- Replays are kept for 7 days on Free and 60 days on Pro.
Heatmaps
Open Heatmaps in the sidebar: "Where visitors click, how far they scroll, and where they spend time."
Choose three things at the top:
- Page: a list of pages that have clicks, most-clicked first, shown as "path (clicks)".
- Type: Click, Scroll or Attention.
- Device: All, Desktop or Mobile. A visitor counts as Desktop when the browser window is 1024 px wide or more, and Mobile below that.
The default is the most-clicked page, Click, Desktop.
Click
Heat points drawn on the page, plus a Top clicks table with the element label, its CSS selector and the click count. A total-clicks figure sits above it. Use it to see whether visitors click what you want them to, and whether they click things that are not links.
Scroll
Shows how many visitors reach each 10% band of the page, the average scroll depth ("Avg scroll depth · N sessions") and how many reached 50%, 75% and 100%. Use it to decide where to put your call to action.
Attention
Shows the time visitors spend in each band of the page, so you can spot content that holds attention and content that is skipped.
Dim page
When a snapshot of the page exists, a Dim page slider lets you fade the page to make the heat easier to read.
Heatmaps need replay and autocapture
The page picture behind a heatmap comes from a recorded replay of that page. Without one you see "No recording of this page yet. Showing clicks without page context." Scroll and attention maps need a recording to overlay. Click heatmaps also need click autocapture to be on. If a heatmap is empty, check both options in Install the tracker.
Scroll depth and attention time are collected automatically while tracking is on. Each page of a single-page app is mapped separately.
Related
- Track events for frustration signals and autocapture.
- Funnels, paths and retention to measure drop-off between pages.
- Connect Claude to ask an assistant about sessions and heatmaps.