Any way to hide this highlight?

[Sterphy]

The grey section next to the cursor and those little ][ symbols - can we hide that? It just gets in the way for me and adds nothing

[Rick Gerard]

That highlight is showing you shutter angle and shutter phase. It goes away if you just zoom out on the timeline a little way. The visual representation is an important clue that tells you how motion blur is going to work. You adjust those settings in the composition panel.

[Sterphy]

But I don't need that information, and I like to see the alternating dark grey/light grey between the keyframes that you can only see when fully zoomed in. Any way to hide it without zooming out? I don't ever want to see it

[Rick Gerard]

It is a tool that you can't hide. If you enable motion blur, you see the Shutter Angle and Shutter Phase.  It's important to know where those values are when you are designing motion graphics that match the motion blur in video or film layers. 

In the latest builds of AE, turning off motion blur will display a fully highlighted frame when you move the "Timeline Navigator" start or end enough so you see approximately 15 frames in the Timeline panel. 

[Sterphy]

I really don't see how a feint grey line helps anyone do anything, let alone guide motion blur. I can see what the motion blur is doing in the programme monitor. It's just needless crap in the way of what I actually want to see

[Rick Gerard]

Seeing the shutter phase and visualizing the duration for motion blur will help you match the motion blur in footage. Pro apps like Nuke also provide a way to view and match the settings to the footage. I like to see the representation of individual frames when I'm zoomed in on the timeline, especially if I'm fiddling with frame rates or doing critical timing of specific events, such as when the keyframes do not precisely align with the start of a frame, like peaks in the audio waveform or an actor's action in a shot.

Here's an example of matching motion to an audio waveform when the peaks and valleys don't precisely line up with the start and end of motion blur:

With motion blur turned on and the timeline zoomed in, you can slide keyframes and adjust speed curves to match the start of the motion in the frame. That elevates your animations' visual quality from enthusiast to ILM pro, with 40 years of experience in the business of visual effects. 

You could submit a feature request to have a switch to turn it off, but it should not go away, and it is a very useful tool..

[Sterphy]

Still doesn't seem that useful. I prefer judge what I'm doing based on how the result looks, not a grey line that shows the halfway point between frames. 

[Warren Heaton]

While I wouldn't mind a preference to hide that, I would never want that highlight to go away.