Short Circuit

node-red-contrib-short-circuit

Short Circuit replaces long wires in the Node-RED editor with compact, interactive endpoints. It reduces visual clutter while preserving the native wire, selection behaviour, and navigation between connected nodes.

Features

• Shorten wires that exceed a configurable canvas distance.

• Reveal the original wire as a dashed native curve.

• Preview the remote node from either endpoint.

• Change the threshhold of the link distance.

Behaviour

Wires longer than maxDistance are displayed as short stubs with endpoints. Hovering an endpoint reveals the dashed connection and its remote-node preview. Clicking an endpoint selects the complete native wire, while clicking the remote preview centres the connected node.

Configuration is stored in short-circuit.json in the Node-RED user directory, normally .node-red/short-circuit.json:

{
  "maxDistance": 800
}

maxDistance is measured in editor canvas units and accepts values from 50 to 5000. Refresh the editor after editing the file; a Node-RED restart is not required. Invalid values use the default distance of 800 and produce a warning in the Node-RED log.

Requirements

• Node-RED 5.0 or newer
• Node.js 18 or newer

Contact

Found a bug, have a suggestion, or want to discuss a plugin?

• Start a topic on the Node-RED Forum and tag me.
• Join the Discord community.

License

Licensed under the MIT License.