Hotjar assigns all visitors a unique identifier called a Hotjar User ID within Recordings when they visit your website. If a user grants consent for you to be able to, Polls and Incoming Feedback will show you their Hotjar User ID, making it easier to compare feedback to behavior.
The Hotjar User ID is useful for identifying the corresponding Recordings from Feedback responses, however, it is not meant to aid in troubleshooting or tracking an individual user. The Hotjar User ID will persist until a visitor clears their browser's cookies. It is not transferred across devices.
The Hotjar User ID is only associated with Hotjar and should not be confused with internal user IDs from your site.
- Finding a Recording for a Feedback response
- How do I connect my internal user ID and Hotjar ID?
- User ID troubleshooting
Hotjar User IDs are assigned automatically
This is to ensure anonymity of users by default. Customizing these IDs is not possible.
Finding a Recording for a Feedback response
Copy a Hotjar User ID from either a Poll or Incoming Feedback.
Click into the Recordings tab in the Hotjar dashboard.
Paste the Hotjar User ID in the Recording filter to narrow down the corresponding Recordings.
You can learn more about the Hotjar User ID and other filters within our Recording Filters article.
How do I connect my internal user ID and Hotjar User ID?
It's not currently possible to directly bring your internal user IDs into Hotjar. Our tools are designed to give you a holistic understanding of your visitors’ experience, so you can identify common issues and opportunities for improvement.
We do not believe it’s necessary to identify individuals visitors to get actionable insights - Hotjar allows you to look at how the average person uses a website or app as a whole to provide the context required to make improvements.
You can learn more about Hotjar’s approach to privacy on this blog post by our CEO.
We're developing a solution for this.
You can read more about our progress on this in our Product Roadmap.
If you are interested in us providing this functionality, we'd love to hear your feedback. You can give us feedback by filling out this survey.
Hotjar User ID troubleshooting
If you're unable to find corresponding Recordings for any Feedback responses, remember that if a Recording snapshot is not collecting data in the same session, any responses at that time will not have a corresponding Recording. There are various cases where Hotjar does not collect Recording data from all visitors. Occasionally you may find someone has submitted responses, but was not captured in a Recording.
Another case where this can happen is when a Recording snapshot has finished. To ensure Hotjar User IDs for users who have granted consent can be found in Recordings, make sure you have active snapshots running.