---
name: Tick marks
slug: tick-marks
category: component
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: The small notches printed along a slider track that show the
  discrete stops the handle can land on.
aliases:
  - name: stop indicators
    source: material
  - name: slider ticks
    source: community
  - name: detents
    source: community
  - name: scale marks
    source: community
tags: []
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - axis
    - track
    - detent
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - slider
implementations:
  - system: material
    name: Stop indicator
    url: https://m3.material.io/components/sliders/overview
sources:
  - title: Sliders, Material Design 3
    url: https://m3.material.io/components/sliders/overview
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: naming the notches printed along a slider
---

Tick marks are the printed scale on a [slider](/slider): a row of small notches along the track
saying where the values are. Without them a track is a continuous stretch of nothing in
particular, and the reader has no way to tell whether the control accepts every value in
between or only five of them. That is the whole job. Tick marks are a scale drawn on a slider,
and the slider is the control; naming them separately matters because the marks can be added or
removed without changing anything else about how the control behaves.

The most common misreading is that marking implies snapping. It does not. A slider can print a
scale and still accept every value between the marks, in which case the notches are a ruler:
they tell you where 25 is so you can aim at it, and nothing stops you resting at 27. Making the
handle land on the marks is a separate decision, and the moment you take it the marks stop being
a scale and become detents, which is the word borrowed from mechanical catches that hold a part
at fixed positions. The two go together often enough that the same drawing usually means both,
which is exactly why it is worth saying which one you mean.

Density is where tick marks go wrong. A hundred notches on a three hundred pixel track is a grey
smear that reads as texture, not as information, and at that point the marks are worse than
none. The usual repairs are to print only the major stops, to draw a minor mark shorter than a
major one so the eye can group them, or to drop the marks entirely and let a numeric read-out
carry the precision instead. Material draws them as stop indicators inside the track and lights
the ones behind the handle, which is a neat trick: the marks the reader has passed take the
filled colour, so the scale doubles as a [sliding indicator](/sliding-indicator) of where the
value sits.

The detent idea is not confined to sliders. [Scroll snap](/scroll-snap) is the same catch
applied to a scroller, the resting positions of a [bottom sheet](/bottom-sheet) are detents by
another name, and a [rotate gesture](/rotate-gesture) that clicks to the nearest 15 degrees is
doing what a marked slider does. Tick marks are simply the case where the stops are printed
where you can see them, which is why the word turns up in interfaces that want to feel like
instruments: [cassette futurism](/cassette-futurism) is full of them, because a scale engraved
next to a control is what hardware does instead of a tooltip.