Annotations

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Annotations enable you to add written notes to a particular day or time on all your insights and dashboards so you can see how changes or incidents impact your metrics.

You can use annotations to mark things like feature updates, version releases, and marketing campaigns, which adds helpful context when you're looking into what might have caused a change in your metrics.

Why Annotations are useful

The chart below shows a large spike in website traffic, which has been annotated to explain why that spike occurs. Annotations can be viewed by hovering over them.

PostHog Annotations

Annotations can be written after the fact, which makes them useful for future reference, or before an event if you want to analyze the future impact of a particular marketing initiative, for example.

Creating an Annotation

When editing a chart in Trends, Sessions or in a Dashboard, hover your cursor over the dates at the bottom of the chart to reveal a button with a + symbol. Clicking it will then open up a modal where you can create your Annotation, as well as choose to have it specifically for the current chart or all of your charts.

With your annotation created, it will now be available at the bottom of your chart, and you can also view all of your existing annotations in /annotations.

Questions?

  • Matt
    10 months ago

    Is there an API for adding annotations?

    We have a structured store of app release notes. Is there an API we can use to push these into PostHog annotations? Failing that is there e.g. a CSV upload option? Or is manual entry the only option?

  • Abdullah
    2 years ago

    Global annotations?

    Is there a way to create global annotations that appear across all dashboards/graphs?

    • Marcus
      2 years agoSolution

      Hey, that is not possible right now, but we are tracking this feature request in this GitHub issue.

  • Salwa
    2 years ago

    Can I add annotation to a Stickiness visual?

    I have created a Stickiness chart, I want to add annotations to specify where my 'core' user segment starts and ends on the x-axis so team members can read the graph better.

    • Marcus
      2 years agoSolution

      Hey Salwa, the Stickiness chart does not support annotations yet.

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