Part 2 · Contexts

Contexts are how you organise habits: tags that group them by place, time, kind of work, or anything else. A habit can wear as many as you like.

Try it

1. Open Learn Excellence for editing: right-click › Edit…, or double-click.
2. In the Contexts field, type “Learning” and press Return.
3. Type “Learning/Apps” and press Return.

Each becomes a tag. Typing a name that already exists reuses it; a new one is created as you go, and the × on a tag takes it off the habit.

The ”/” nests a context: “Learning/Apps” sits inside “Learning”, so filtering on “Learning” also shows this habit.

The filter pills

Your contexts appear as pills above the habit list, each with the number of habits it matches that you haven’t logged effort on today. No Context is a pill of its own, for habits you haven’t tagged.

• Click a pill to show only habits with that context. Click it again to turn the filter off.
• Double-click a pill to show only habits without it (“Not Learning”). Right-click › Filter offers Off, Include and Not as well.
• A pill with children ends in ”…” (e.g. “Learning…”). Click it to reveal its children beside it. If a list has only one top-level context, it steps aside and its children show instead.
• The ”…” pill at the end opens every context in the list you’re looking at, with a search field. It lights up when the context you’re filtering by is one of those tucked away there.
• The × pill clears the filter. It shows whenever one is on.
• Right-click a pill for Copy Link (a link that opens the app with that filter already on), Rename… and Delete. Renaming a context to a name that already exists merges the two.

Each list in the sidebar remembers its own filter, so “Learning” in Active doesn’t follow you into Paused. The window title shows it, as in “Active · Learning”.

On iPhone, tap a pill to turn it on or off, and press and hold it for the same menu.

Group by Context, in the toolbar, splits the list into a section per context instead of filtering it.

Tagging several habits at once

Try it

Select more than one habit, right-click, and use Set Contexts.

A checkmark means every selected habit has that context; a dash means only some do. There’s also No Context to clear them, and New Context… to make one on the spot.

To see and manage every context you have, open File › Contexts… (⇧⌘C). On iPhone, it’s the tag button at the top of the sidebar.

If you use Apple Reminders with Excellence (Part 8), a reminder falls under a context when one of its tags, or the name of its list, is spelled the same as the context.