How Categorization Works

Rize's categorization system is the core of how it tracks and organizes your time. Our goal with categorization to make it as automated as possible. This guide explains the mechanics behind how Rize automatically categorizes your activities.

AI Tracking Rules Creation

When you first create your account, Rize will immediately begin creating tracking rules and categories based on your job title.

Categorization Process

1. Rize monitors your active window, capturing the app name, URL, and window title.
2. It then applies the most specific matching tracking rule. For example, if you have rules for both google.com and docs.google.com, and you're on docs.google.com/doc/1, Rize will apply the docs.google.com rule.
3. If no matching rule is found, the activity is temporarily categorized as "Miscellaneous."
4. After 2 minutes of activity in a "Miscellaneous" app or website, Rize will use AI to automatically assign it to the most appropriate category based on your existing setup.
5. If AI Categorization is turned off, Rize will reassign the activity to "Uncategorized" after 10 minutes of use, prompting you to manually categorize it in your dashboard.

You can see your activity by category in Home dashboard in the Activity column.

You can also see your tracking events with their categories in Categories > Activity Log.

Category Settings

You can view and edit the settings for your categores in Settings > Categories. You'll see each category has four settings:

1. Focus Category - When this is enabled, Rize will use that category when auto-detecting Focus time. Actively using apps and websites of this category during a focus session will improve your focus score.
2. Work Category - When this is enabled, Rize will count time spent in this category towards your Work Hours metric.
3. Idle Detection - Rize will stop tracking after 5 minutes of inactivity when the active app is categorized by a category with idle detection enabled. You will want to disable this for categories such as Video Conferencing or Entertainment where you will often go idle while still being active. Idleness is determined by 5 or more minutes without keystrokes or mouse movements.
4. Distraction Blocker Enabled - When this is enabled, Rize trigger the distraction blocker for an app or website categorized with this category during Focus sessions. The blocker is only triggered after the distraction blocking threshold is hit (the default is 2 minutes). See the Distraction Blocker docs for details.

Creating a New Category

You can easily create a new category at any time.

Changing the Category of an App or Website

Deleting a Category

To delete a category, simply head to Settings > Categories and find the category you'd like to delete. From there, click the track can button in the row of that category.

Override Categories for Specific Time Periods

Override the Category for a Specific App or Website

You can see that an app or website has been overridden by the yellow flag indicator.