A monthly habit calendar in Obsidian, without Dataview

A year of tiny squares is good for the long view. For this month you want a calendar: the day numbers in weekday columns, and a dot under every day you kept the habit. One heatmap block draws it from the checkboxes in your daily notes. Give it a few habits and each gets a dot in its own colour.

1A checkbox per habit

One checkbox property per habit in each daily note. In a daily note, add a property, set its type to Checkbox, and name it after the habit.

---
gym: true
read: false
meditate: true
---

## 2026-10-02

• 2026-10-02The note's name is its date. Anything after the date is fine: 2026-10-02 Friday counts too.
• gym: trueA ticked box puts a dot under that day. An unticked one, or none at all, leaves the day bare.
• DiaryThe folder the block reads from. Use the one your daily notes already live in.

2One habit, one month

Make a note, say Habits.md, and paste this block.

```heatmap
source: Diary
field: gym
color: orange
range: month
layout: calendar
```

• range: monthThe month you are in, from the 1st to its last day. The days still ahead are there too, dimmed and without dots.
• layout: calendarDraw it as a calendar: the month and year on top, a column per weekday, and each day's number. The week starts where your language starts it.
• field: gymThe habit. Each note that ticked it puts a dot under its day.
• Captiongym: 4 of 6 days on the 6th: the days with a dot, out of the days so far this month, today included.

Today has a ring around it. Hover a day for its date, the value and the note it came from. A day with a dot is a link: click it and its note opens. On a phone, the first tap shows the same text under the calendar, and a second tap opens the note.

The dots count notes, not ticks. Two notes on one day, a morning and an evening one, give that day two dots. A day never shows more than three.

3Several habits, a dot each

Swap field for layers, one line per habit. This block draws the picture above.

```heatmap
source: Diary
range: month
layout: calendar
layers:
  - { field: gym, color: orange, label: Gym }
  - { field: read, color: green, label: Reading }
  - { field: meditate, color: purple, label: Meditation }
```

• layersOne line per habit, in place of field. A day gets a dot for every habit ticked in its note, in the order of the list. Up to four dots fit under a day.
• colorPer habit: blue, green, cyan, purple, pink, orange, red, gray or #rrggbb. Leave it out and the next free colour is picked.
• labelThe name in the legend under the calendar and in the tooltip. Without it, the property name.
• CaptionCounts the days with at least one dot: Gym, Reading, Meditation: 5 of 6 days.

The tooltip lists every habit in that day's note, ticked or not, as in Gym 1, Reading 0, Meditation 1.

4This week, and days off

For a single row, the week you are in, write range: week. skip_field marks the days you were off.

```heatmap
source: Diary
field: gym
color: orange
range: week
layout: calendar
skip_field: vacation
```

• range: weekSeven days, from the first day of your week to the last. When the week runs into the next month, the heading names both: Sep 2026 to Oct 2026.
• skip_field: vacationA day whose note sets vacation: true is hatched, dot or no dot, and the legend explains the hatch. The caption's count does not change.
• Days aheadA note for next Friday with vacation: true hatches that day already. Anything else in it waits: a day ahead gets no dot.

The whole note

The blocks from steps 3 and 4, ready to paste into an empty note: the month with every habit, and this week of gym under it.

```heatmap
source: Diary
range: month
layout: calendar
layers:
  - { field: gym, color: orange, label: Gym }
  - { field: read, color: green, label: Reading }
  - { field: meditate, color: purple, label: Meditation }
```

```heatmap
source: Diary
field: gym
color: orange
range: week
layout: calendar
skip_field: vacation
```

Ask your agent

With Dashy's skill installed, an AI agent can write this from a request in plain words: it looks at your property names and folders first, then writes the blocks. Open the note in Reading view and paste any error a block shows back to the agent.

In a new note called Habits, show this month as a calendar from my daily notes, with a dot under each day I went to the gym, read or meditated, each habit in its own colour. Under it, this week's gym days the same way, with the days I marked as vacation shown as days off.

What comes back is something like the note above. The agent's YAML may differ from the guide's, with your own property names and labels, but it should do the same, and this guide is the reference to compare it against. More on working with an agent.

What it does not do

The same calendar with Tracker or dataviewjs

Both read the same daily notes. The Heatmap Calendar plugin is the other name people search for. It draws a whole year from a dataviewjs script you write, and a month on its own was asked for in its issue #7.

```tracker
searchType: frontmatter
searchTarget: gym, read, meditate
folder: Diary
datasetName: Gym, Reading, Meditation
month:
    startWeekOn: 'Mon'
```

```dataviewjs
const done = new Set(dv.pages('"Diary"')
  .where(p => p.file.day && p.gym === true)
  .map(p => p.file.day.toISODate())
  .array());

const first = dv.luxon.DateTime.now().startOf("month");
const rows = [];
let week = Array(first.weekday - 1).fill("");
for (let d = first; d.month === first.month; d = d.plus({ days: 1 })) {
  week.push(d.day + (done.has(d.toISODate()) ? " ●" : ""));
  if (week.length === 7) { rows.push(week); week = []; }
}
if (week.length) rows.push(week.concat(Array(7 - week.length).fill("")));
dv.table(["Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun"], rows);
```

Variations

```heatmap
source: Diary
field: gym
color: orange
range: month
layout: calendar
```

```heatmap
source: Diary
field: gym
color: orange
range: 182d
```

```heatmap
source: Diary
field: run_km
color: green
range: month
layout: calendar
```

```heatmap
source: Workouts
field: minutes
color: red
range: month
layout: calendar
```

```heatmap
source: Diary
field: meditate
color: purple
range: month
layout: calendar
title: Meditation this month
```

If a block shows an error

A block that cannot draw what you asked for says why, inside the note. The ones you are likely to see here:

• layout: calendar needs range: month or range: week. The range line is missing or says something else. The grid is drawn until you fix it.
• bands is ignored with layout: calendar. Delete the bands line. A day shows dots, not a shade.
• layout expects grid or calendar. A typo, such as layout: calender. The grid is drawn instead.
• "meditate" never contributed a value here. One habit has no dots at all: its name is spelled differently in the block and in the notes, or those notes are in another folder.

Related guides

Two activities on one heatmap

Gym in orange, reading in green, on one year of days.

A habit tracker without Dataview

Counts, streaks and a year of days from daily note checkboxes.

A streak that skips weekends

Friday joins up with Monday. Holidays do not end the run.