Ticker — butter docs Skip to content
Widgets / The day

Ticker

A crypto and stock watchlist with prices, daily change, and 7-day sparklines — crypto works out of the box, stocks with your own free API key.

Up to ten assets, each a single scannable row: symbol, name, a 7-day sparkline for crypto, the current price, and the day's move in green or red. Quotes refresh every minute while the tab is visible.

Free Crypto: no key needed Stocks: your own Finnhub key 60-second cache
Ticker
  • BTC Bitcoin $118,420 +2.14%
  • ETH Ethereum $4,286 −0.82%
  • SOL Solana $243.18 +4.61%

Crypto works immediately

Crypto quotes come from CoinGecko's public API — no key, no account, no setup. Drop the widget in and BTC and ETH are already there; add more from the widget settings. Each crypto row carries a 7-day sparkline tinted by direction, so you get the shape of the week, not just today's number.

Stocks bring your own key

Stock quotes need a free Finnhub API key — their free tier is generous (60 calls/minute) and takes about a minute to sign up for. Paste the key into the widget settings once. Two things worth knowing about how butter treats it:

  • The key stays on your device. It lives in extension storage on that machine, deliberately outside the widget settings that cloud-sync — credentials never ride along with your layout.
  • Requests go straight to Finnhub. Your browser calls finnhub.io directly with your key. There's no butter server in the middle.

Until a key is set, stock rows show a quiet dash and the widget points you to settings — crypto keeps working regardless.

Add it to your dashboard

Press E to enter edit mode, A to add, pick Ticker. It drops in at four-wide, three-tall — enough for five or six rows. The watchlist caps at ten assets per widget; if you genuinely track more, drop in a second Ticker with its own list.

Settings

Setting Type Default
Watchlist

Mix crypto and stocks freely, drag to reorder. Crypto search understands names and symbols — type btc, solana, or doge and butter resolves the exact coin (with a pick-list when the symbol is ambiguous). Stocks take the ticker as-is: AAPL, NVDA.

up to 10 assets BTC · ETH
Currency

Applies to crypto prices only — stocks quote in their listing currency (USD for US tickers).

USD · EUR · GBP USD
Finnhub API key

Required for stock quotes, not for crypto. Grab a free key at finnhub.io, paste it once. It's stored on that device only — it never syncs and never touches our servers.

password field empty

Small things you might miss

  • Sub-dollar coins get more decimals. DOGE at $0.0842 shows four decimal places; BTC shows two. Precision follows the price, so small-cap rows still mean something.
  • Ambiguous symbols ask, exact ones don't. Typing btc adds Bitcoin straight away because the symbol matches exactly; typing luna shows a short pick-list with market-cap ranks so you grab the one you meant.
  • Partial failure stays partial. If Finnhub is down or your key expires, the stock rows degrade with a one-line notice — crypto rows keep updating, and vice versa.

Heads up

  • CoinGecko's free tier is shared per IP. If something else on your machine hammers CoinGecko, you might see an amber rate-limit notice for a minute. The widget's 60-second cache keeps its own usage to roughly one call per minute.
  • Unknown stock symbols show a dash. Finnhub answers made-up tickers with a zero price rather than an error, so butter drops those rows to a “—” instead of showing $0.00.
  • It's a watchlist, not a terminal. Quotes can lag the exchange by a little; don't day-trade off your new tab.