Everything FibScanner does, and how to drive it.
A trader-to-trader walkthrough of the side panel, the two strategies, every setting, and recipes for tuning it to your style. Accurate to v1.2.0.
01 Quick start — 2 minutes
- Install FibScanner from the Chrome Web Store and click the toolbar icon — the side panel opens.
- Pick your markets. Each strategy has its own watchlist — click “N/284 markets” to choose. There's a search box and select-all per group.
- Pick your timeframes. The TF chips (1m → 1M) apply to everything. FibScanner wakes exactly on each bar close — a daily-only watchlist costs nothing all day.
- Have a licence? ⚙ Settings → Licence → paste your key → Activate. The header chip shows your plan (FREE / TRADER / PRO / ELITE). Without a key you run Free: your first 1 market · first 1 timeframe · the Fib strategy.
- That's it. When a setup confirms on a closed candle, you get a desktop notification and a card in the panel with the full trade plan drawn on a chart.
FibScanner only ever evaluates closed candles. Signals never repaint, never vanish after the fact, and each setup alerts exactly once per bar.
02 The side panel, section by section
- Header — plan chip (click = licence settings), scan status (“scanned N cells Xs ago”), ⚙ settings.
- Live setups — every setup valid right now, ranked by score. Cards expand into a full chart (fib ladder, entry/SL/TP lines, R:R shading); click the chart for a full-tab high-resolution view. Buttons: copy plan (clipboard text), share (branded image → clipboard + X post).
- Pattern watch (Elite) — candlestick pattern notices. Informational only — no entry, no stop, no score (see The strategies).
- Recent alerts — the scanner's own honest ledger. Every alert it ever fired, graded against what happened next: TP1 ✓ hit, SL ✗ hit, or still OPEN. Per-strategy win/loss tallies at the top. We grade ourselves so you don't have to trust screenshots.
- Strategies — toggles + per-strategy watchlists.
- Timeframes — global TF chips.
03 Reading a setup card
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| BUY / SELL | Trade direction of the setup. |
| Score (0–100) | Setup quality by the rules — zone precision, impulse strength, confirmation-candle quality, trend alignment. It is not a win probability. |
| Entry | Close of the confirmation candle (the alert price). |
| Stop | Beyond the confirmation candle's extreme, with a volatility floor: never closer than 0.5×ATR — tighter stops sit inside bar-to-bar noise. |
| Target 1 | Fib: the impulse extreme. Breakout: the measured move (1× range height). |
| Target 2 | Fib: the 1.272 extension. Breakout: 1.5× range height. |
| R:R | Reward to Target 1 ÷ risk to stop. Honest number — computed off the floored stop. |
| Retrace | Fib only: how deep the pullback went (50% is the heart of the zone). |
| Level | Breakout only: the broken range boundary. |
| Size | Position size for your account settings. Shown as units (≈ risk in $). |
| funding / L:S | Crypto only: live funding rate + long/short ratio, with a “crowded side” warning. |
| Footer | The confirmation candle type + when the alert fired. |
04 The strategies
Fib 50% Retracement (the core)
The pipeline every candidate must survive, in order:
- A real impulse leg — a swing of at least 1.5× the market's average range (ATR). Noise doesn't count.
- A pullback into the 45–66% zone of that leg — the area around the 50% level where trend-continuation entries live.
- A confirmation candle — the just-closed bar must be a genuine bullish/bearish engulfing or hammer/shooting star in the trade direction, and of real size (≥ 0.5×ATR). A wick poking the zone is not enough; a doji is not conviction.
- A trending market — ADX below your threshold (default 20) = chop = no trade.
- Trade direction — by default longs only in uptrends, shorts only in downtrends (EMA50 vs EMA200 on your timeframe), plus a veto on setups fighting a strongly-trending higher timeframe.
- Reward floor — Target 1 must pay at least 1.2× the risk (default).
- Survivors get scored 0–100; only setups above your minimum alert.
Range Breakout
A tight consolidation (≤3.5×ATR wide), its boundary tested at least twice, then broken by a decisive full-bodied candle that clears the level. Targets are measured moves. 4h and above only — our own testing showed faster breakouts lose money, so we don't ship them.
By design, breakout is not trend-filtered by default — breakouts are regime-change trades, so aligning them with the old trend would filter out the best ones. You can opt into a trend filter in Settings if it fits your style.
Candlestick Patterns (Elite — notifier)
A heads-up service, not a strategy: “a decisive pattern just printed” — you decide what it means in your own context. Reports big engulfings, hammers/shooting stars, and big dojis (all size-floored against ATR so routine small bars stay silent), each labelled with trend / against trend / indecision.
Pattern Watch is context, not a call — a decisive pattern at a level you care about is useful information, but on its own it isn't a trade plan, so we don't present it as one. It's the same read the Fib strategy uses for its confirmation step at the 50% zone.
05 Settings reference
Open with ⚙ (panel header) or right-click the icon → Options.
Fib 50% Retracement
| Setting | Default | Meaning & when to tweak |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum score | 65 | Alert threshold on the 0–100 quality score. Lower toward 55 for more (weaker) alerts on a small watchlist; raise to 70–75 for only A-grade setups on a big one. |
| Trade direction | With the trend | Longs in uptrends, shorts in downtrends + a veto against strongly-trending higher timeframes. Switch to “Any direction” if you deliberately hunt reversals at the 50%. |
| Chop filter (min ADX) | 20 | Rejects setups when the market isn't trending. 0 = off. Raise to 25–30 for strong trends only. |
| Min risk:reward | 1.2 | Target 1 must pay at least this multiple of risk. Raise to 1.5–2.0 to skip modest-reward trades; don't go below 1. |
Range Breakout
| Setting | Default | Meaning & when to tweak |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum score | 65 | Quality threshold, same idea as Fib. |
| Min level tests | 2 | How many times the boundary must be tested before a break counts. 3–4 = better-proven levels, fewer alerts. |
| Min risk:reward | 1.2 | Measured move ÷ risk floor. |
| Trade direction | Any direction | Optional with-trend gate. Only choose “with trend” deliberately — testing showed it removes winning regime-change trades. |
Candlestick Patterns (Elite)
| Setting | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Engulfing | on | Bullish/bearish engulfings with a body ≥ 0.6×ATR. |
| Hammer / shooting star | on | Rejection candles (deep wick, close in the reversal third), range ≥ 0.8×ATR. |
| Big doji | on | Violent indecision bars: range ≥ 1.2×ATR with almost no body. |
| Pattern direction | With the trend | “Any direction” adds counter-trend prints, labelled “against trend”. Dojis always report. |
| Notify on timeframes | 1h and above | Keeps it signal-worthy on big watchlists. Set “All” for a small scalping watchlist. |
Alerts, sizing & delivery
- Desktop notifications — a Chrome notification per fresh alert (cards still appear in the panel if off).
- Alert sound — none / system / ding / kerching / chime / custom upload (≤1 MB wav/mp3). Sounds play even with notifications off.
- Date & time format — UK / US / ISO, applied everywhere (cards, history, Telegram, share images).
- Share image format — Landscape 16:9 (X/Discord) or Portrait 4:5 (Telegram/IG/mobile).
- Position sizing — set account size + risk % once; every card shows the size from the entry-to-stop distance. Account size 0 turns the sizer off. Stored on your device only.
- Telegram (Pro+) — bring your own bot: @BotFather →
/newbot→ copy token, message the bot once, get your chat id from @userinfobot, paste both in Settings → Save → Send test. Your token is never sent to us. - Webhook alerts (Elite) — POST every alert as JSON to any https URL (a Discord webhook, your own bot, a spreadsheet script). Chrome asks permission for that one site only.
Licence
Paste the key from your purchase email or account page → Activate.
- Your plan revalidates every 24h; up to 72h offline is tolerated before dropping to Free (it restores automatically once online).
- Deactivate this device frees one of your licence's 3 device seats.
- Manage subscription opens your customer portal (payment, cancel, invoices).
06 Tuning recipes
Fewer, better (default)
Leave everything at defaults. Every knob's default is the backtested setting — chosen by evidence, not vibes.
Quiet swing trader
TFs 4h/1d/1w · Fib score 70 · ADX 25 · both strategies, full watchlists. A handful of high-bar alerts per week.
Crypto scalper
TFs 5m/15m · crypto watchlist only · Fib score 60. Expect noise — fast TFs are the hardest environment for any system.
Reversal hunter
Fib direction = Any · patterns direction = Any · watch for “against trend” hammers/stars at your own levels.
Index / commodity swing
Those markets are 1h/4h+ by design (delayed feed); TFs 4h/1d fit naturally. Their 4h candles are session-anchored to match your charting platform.
Drowning in alerts?
In order: raise min scores → raise the pattern TF floor → trim watchlists → raise ADX. Starving? The reverse, one step at a time.
