What are categories and how are they assigned?

Categories are classifications assigned by RescueTime, with the default category of a site or app defaulting to the most popular category. For example, if most users categorize Facebook.com as " Social Networking > General," then that will be the default category.

At RescueTime we try our best to provide good defaults, but there are bound to be cases where a default category or productivity ranking doesn't match your experience with a particular website or application.

Changing Categories for a website or application

You can quickly change the category or productivity ranking of an activity. For example, if you use Facebook primarily as a communication tool, you could re-categorize it to " Communication & Scheduling > General" and give it a productivity ranking of "Very Productive." You can do this from any Reports.

Hovering over the name of the activity will make the pencil and paper icon on the far right appear. Clicking on the icon will open the editing dialogue.  You can then change the category or productivity score for the activity.

There are two delete options. Either you can Delete just the amount of time that is reported for the time span you are viewing, or you can eliminate all time for the activity and prevent future recording by choosing "Ignore this activity forever." Activities can be "Unignored" by going to the Tools Menu > Account Settings > Privacy page to resume logging if you change your mind in the future. Here is a how-to video on how to delete or ignore time. Please note this action is not retroactive. Ignored data is not recoverable.

You can also choose to create custom categories and you can find more details regarding sub-categories here. Note that if you use applications that are not commonly used by other RescueTime subscribers, you might have apps and sites that have no categories, which are automatically added to Uncategorized Activities that you can categorize in the Categorize Activities page.