Build a Pellet Filter That Answers “What Should I Do This Afternoon?”

Once a vault has a few hundred tasks, you can’t scan the whole table. With a saved filter, you go from that table to a short list in one click.

Build the filter

In the Table toolbar, click Filter to open the builder. You add conditions and join them with and / or. Pellet’s help uses this example:

Status is not done · and · Due is within next 7 days · and · Tags has any of work

Each field offers the operators that make sense for it. Dates get thirteen, including is overdue, is today, is within next N days, is this week and is next month. You can build most filters without typing a date.

Save four filters

Save a filter and it becomes a pill above the table that you click to apply. Pellet’s help suggests these four:

• Today: due today or overdue, and not done.
• This week: due within 7 days.
• Waiting: status is doing, so you see what’s in flight.
• No date: due is empty, for tasks you haven’t scheduled.

For the afternoon question, click Today. No date is the one I’d check once a week, since undated tasks don’t show up in Today or This week.

Give a filter its own tab

Right-click a pill, or a filter in the side pane, and choose Open in new tab. The tab takes the filter’s name. In that tab you can change the search, conditions, sort, grouping or kinds of file, and the saved filter stays as it was.

A bar above the table tells you the tab has unsaved changes and offers Save to filter and Revert. Close the tab and Pellet asks whether to save. You can keep Today in one tab and This week in another, and try changes in either without breaking the saved version.

Sort, group and edit in bulk

Sort goes three levels deep, for example priority, then due date, then title. Group splits the table into sections by status, priority, group, type or kind of file, or by any property you’ve made a column for. Files without that property get their own section, so they stay in view.

To change several tasks at once, select the rows. You can set a due date on all of them, move them to a group or mark them done.

Inside a saved filter

A saved filter remembers its search, conditions, match, sort and grouping, plus the kinds of file it shows. Pellet stores saved filters in your vault’s .pellet/ folder, so they sync to your other devices with the rest of the vault.

You’ll find the full details on Pellet’s help page: Filters and saved views.

Disclosure: I’m the creator of Pellet. The steps above come from Pellet’s help page on filters and saved views.