Configuration

Plugin Settings (Global)

Access via Settings → Life Tracker.

Settings are grouped into tabs: Property definitions, Visualizations, Dates and About.

High Contrast

In the Visualizations tab, under Accessibility. Off by default.

Turn it on for maximum-visibility rendering: thick card and cell borders, strong saturated chart and heatmap colors, nothing dimmed, and unmistakable focus outlines. It overrides the color scheme chosen per view or per preset — that is the point of the mode.

Custom value-to-color heatmap mappings are the one exception: those colors are your own encoding of what each value means, so they are left untouched.

First Day of the Week

In the Dates tab. Choose whether weeks start on Monday (default) or Sunday. Affects weekly grouping, heatmap week columns, and the “this week” / “last week” time frames. ISO week labels (YYYY-Www filenames, week numbers) stay Monday-based.

Filename Date Patterns

In the Dates tab. Out of the box, the plugin reads dates from filenames such as 2026-07-30, 2026-W31, 2026-07, 2026-Q3 and 2026. If your notes are named differently — Journal 2026-07-30, 20260730, 30.07.2026 — add a pattern so those notes still land on the right date.

Write patterns with placeholders:

Placeholder	Meaning	Example
``	Full ISO date, same as `--`	`2026-07-30`
``	Four-digit year	`2026`
``	Two-digit month	`07`
``	Two-digit day of the month	`30`
``	ISO week number	`31`
``	Quarter, including the `Q`	`Q3`
`*`	Any text

Examples:

Good to know:

The whole filename must match the pattern — use * for the parts that vary.
A pattern containing / matches the note’s path, not just its name, so daily/ only matches notes inside the daily folder. Use this when the same filename exists in several folders and only one of them holds your tracked notes.
Matching ignores case, so journal 2026-07-30 matches Journal too.
The time period is derived from the placeholders you use: a day (or ) means daily notes, weekly, `` quarterly, a month monthly, a year alone yearly.
Patterns are tried top to bottom, before the built-in formats. The built-in formats always keep working, so nothing breaks if you add none.
“Capture today” prefers a note matched by one of your own patterns over a note that only matched a built-in format, so a folder-scoped pattern reliably wins over an identically named note elsewhere.
Every pattern shows either an example of what it matches or an explanation of what’s wrong with it, right below the input.
“Capture today” also uses your patterns to find today’s note.

Creating Missing Notes

In the Dates tab.

You skip a day. Life happens. The next time you run “Capture today”, there’s no note to capture into, and the plugin just tells you so. Annoying, because the one thing you wanted to do was record something for that day.

Turn on Create missing notes when capturing and the plugin offers to create the note first, then opens capture on it.

It never invents a location for that note. That matters: a plugin that guesses where your daily notes go will eventually guess wrong, and you’ll find files scattered in folders you never chose. Instead it reads the folder, the template and the naming from a plugin you’ve already set up:

Obsidian Starter Kit. Pick which note type describes your daily notes in the dropdown that appears. The plugin then uses its folder, its template, its name prefix and suffix, and its mandatory tags. You get a proper note of that type, not an empty file in roughly the right place.
Periodic Notes. Its daily folder, date format and template.

If you have neither, nothing is created and the plugin says why.

A few things worth knowing:

It’s off by default. A plugin shouldn’t start writing new files into your vault because you updated it.
You’re always asked first, and the confirmation shows you the exact path.
Nothing is ever overwritten. If a note is already there, it’s reused.
Templates go through Templater, exactly once. If Templater is already set up to template new files itself, the plugin steps back and lets it. Applying a second template on top would duplicate the whole note.
No Templater? The note is still created, and it still gets your captured values. Recording the data is the point.
If the resulting filename is one the plugin can’t read a date from, you’re warned before anything is created. Such a note won’t show up in your views. Adding a matching filename date pattern fixes it.

If your daily notes live in week folders

This one bites people, so it’s worth spelling out.

Pair the ISO week-numbering year with the week number. In the Starter Kit that’s /. In a Periodic Notes format it’s GGGG/WW.

Use the calendar year instead (``, or YYYY) and a single week gets split across two folders every New Year. 2024-12-30 is a Monday, and it belongs to week 01 of 2025. With the calendar year it lands in 2024/01, far away from the rest of its own week, and sorted before 2024/52 for good measure.

Same story for weekly note names. Use the ISO tokens GGGG-[W]WW, not the locale ones gggg-[W]ww. Locale weeks start on Sunday, so every Sunday resolves to the following week. That’s not an edge case once a year. That’s 52 times a year.

Animation Duration

In the Visualizations tab.

Control how long chart animations play (in milliseconds).

Default: 3000ms
Range: 0-10000ms
Tip: Set to 0 to disable animations

Visualization Presets

Auto-apply visualization settings based on property names.

Field	Description
Pattern	Text to match against property names
Type	Visualization type to apply
Scale	Optional min/max range
Color	Optional color scheme
Aggregation	Average (default) or Sum for line/bar/area/bubble/heatmap

Example: Pattern mood with Heatmap type and 1-5 scale applies to all properties containing “mood” in the name.

Override behavior: Local per-view configurations always take precedence over presets.

Property Definitions

Configure trackable properties for the capture command. See Property Capture for details.

Life Tracker View Options

Configured via the view’s settings panel (gear icon).

Option	Default	Description
Granularity	daily	Time grouping (daily to yearly)
Time frame	all_time	Date range filter
Date anchor	(auto)	Property to use for date resolution
Grid columns	3	Number of columns (1-6)
Show legend	true	Display chart legends
Legend position	right	Where the legend sits on pie/doughnut/polar charts (top/right/bottom/left)
Show empty dates	true	Include dates with no data (rendered as gaps in charts, not zeros)
Hide header controls	false	Hide the time frame / overlay / columns toolbar for a compact view
Cell size	12	Heatmap cell size in pixels
Show day labels	true	Day labels on heatmaps
Show month labels	true	Month labels on heatmaps
Show streak stats	true	Streak row below heatmaps
Show trend	true	Trend arrow and trend row on line/bar/area charts
Embedded height	400	Height when embedded (pixels)

Grid View Options

Option	Default	Description
Time frame	all_time	Date range filter for notes
Hide notes	required	When to hide completed notes

Hide notes options:

required: Hide when required properties are filled
all: Hide when all properties are filled
never: Always show all notes

Per-Visualization Config

Stored per view, per visualization. Access via right-click context menu.

Setting	Description
Type	Visualization type
Scale	Min/max range (auto or preset)
Color scheme	Color palette; heatmaps add Viridis/Cividis and a custom value-to-color mapping
Reference line	Target line with value and label
Aggregation	Average (default) or Sum — line, bar, area, radar, bubble charts, and heatmaps
Moving average	Off (default), 7, 14, or 30 periods — line and area charts only
Running total	Off (default) or Enabled — plots the cumulative total; line and area charts only
X-axis	Date (default) or Note name — one point per note; line, bar, and area charts
Heatmap options	Cell size, day/month labels (heatmap only)

Aggregation also applies to overlay charts (set in the overlay’s own config, where it is shared across all of the overlay’s properties — see Overlay Config).

Overlay Config

Stored per view. Access via overlay card context menu.

Setting	Description
Display name	User-defined overlay name
Chart type	Line, Bar, or Area
Properties	Array of property IDs (minimum 2)
Scale	Shared Y-axis min/max
Color scheme	Color palette
Reference lines	Per-property target lines
Aggregation	Average (default) or Sum — applied to all properties
Hide individual visualizations	Hide separate cards for overlay props

Scale Presets

Available for numeric visualizations:

Preset	Range
Auto	Dynamic
0-1	0 to 1
0-5	0 to 5
1-5	1 to 5
0-10	0 to 10
1-10	1 to 10
0-100	0 to 100

Color Schemes

Available for all chart types except Tag Cloud:

green (default)
blue
purple
orange
red
colorblind — eight colors that stay distinguishable with any common form of color vision deficiency

Heatmaps use their own list: auto (the default — follows the property’s value direction), the five schemes above, plus viridis and cividis (colorblind-friendly gradients), plus a custom mapping that assigns a color to each specific value. A custom mapping is stored inline on the card rather than as a name, and takes precedence over the view-wide Color scheme setting.

Date Anchor Resolution

Priority order for determining entry dates:

Filename pattern: your custom patterns first, then the built-in YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY-Www, YYYY-MM, YYYY-Qq, YYYY
Date anchor property: Configured in view settings
File metadata: ctime or mtime

Configuration Priority

For visualization settings:

Per-view column config: Highest priority
Global preset: Applied if no local config exists
Default/unconfigured: Shows selection card