Small note: I'm French and not a native English speaker ā I use AI to help me write in English. Be kind, and happy (untangled) noodling! š
TLDWTR: Click HERE for a GIF SHOWCASE !
The problem every ComfyUI user knows
Your workflow started clean. Three months later it's a glorious plate of spaghetti ā forty nodes, links crossing everywhere, and every time you want to tweak one sampler you spend thirty seconds just following noodles to figure out what feeds into it.
Global "hidden links" mode? Now you can't see anything at all. Zooming in and out forever? That's your wrist filing a complaint.
The fix: one shortcut
LinkSpotlight is a small, free, open-source extension that does exactly one thing well :
Press Alt+H with a node selected ā every link that doesn't touch that node disappears. Only the connections of the node you're working on remain. Press Alt+H again (or just click on empty canvas) ā everything comes back.
And the spotlight follows your selection live: click another node and the highlight moves with you. Select several nodes and you get the union of their links. No mode to configure, no panel to open ā select, press, work.
Click HERE for a GIF SHOWCASE !
Install (two clicks)
Open ComfyUI-Manager ā Custom Nodes Manager, search for LinkSpotlight, install, restart. Done.
Or manually:
cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Ding-sl/ComfyUI-LinkSpotlightIt ships zero Python nodes and zero dependencies ā it's a pure frontend extension. It adds nothing to your node library and never writes anything into your workflow files.
Make it yours
Everything lives under Settings ā LinkSpotlight:
- Link opacity ā 0 hides out-of-focus links completely (default); around 0.07 keeps them faintly visible, like a blueprint under tracing paper. Pick your poison.
- Depth ā 1 shows only the selected node's links; 2 also keeps every link of its direct neighbors, great for tracing a whole region.
- Auto-off ā clearing the selection exits spotlight mode automatically (on by default).
- Node opacity ā optionally dim unrelated nodes too, for maximum tunnel vision. The shortcut is a native ComfyUI keybinding, so you can remap it in
Settings ā Keybinding (command: Toggle Link Spotlight). Tip: if you want plain H, unbind comfy.Canvas.Lock first ā core ComfyUI uses that key to lock the canvas.
Works with both the classic canvas nodes and the new Vue nodes beta ("Nodes 2.0") ā only the optional node-dimming setting is canvas-only.
Under the hood (for the curious)
LinkSpotlight wraps ComfyUI's canvas link-rendering path with non-destructive filters: the set of "focused" nodes is recomputed once per frame from your selection, and each link is drawn, dimmed or skipped individually. When the spotlight is off, the overhead is a single boolean check ā the extension is effectively free. Because it touches internal frontend APIs, it's built to fail safe: if a future ComfyUI update renames those internals, LinkSpotlight disables itself cleanly with a console message instead of breaking your canvas. There's even a dedicated "frontend breakage" issue template on GitHub so a fix ships fast.
Honest alternatives
ComfyUI-SelectionFocus ā an always-on take on the same idea: it dims unrelated links whenever something is selected. If you want the effect permanently, check it out. LinkSpotlight is the opposite philosophy: an explicit shortcut you press when you need focus, plus depth control, node dimming and a zero-cost idle path.
Roadmap & feedback
Ideas currently on the list: smarter depth modes, hover-based highlighting, and whatever lands in the issues. Bug reports and feature requests are open to everyone:
ā https://github.com/Ding-sl/ComfyUI-LinkSpotlight/issues
Free, forever
LinkSpotlight is MIT-licensed and will stay free. If it saves you from noodle blindness, a ā on Github https://github.com/Ding-sl/ComfyUI-LinkSpotlight genuinely helps the project get discovered.