Microsoft Clarity Filters: Advanced Guide to Finding What Matters

Clarity records every session on your site. Without filters, you're drowning in data. The filtering system is how you turn thousands of recordings into specific, actionable insights — but most users only scratch the surface. This guide covers every filter type, advanced combinations, saved segments, and custom tags.

Why Filters Matter More Than Dashboards

Clarity's dashboard gives you averages: average scroll depth, overall rage click rate, total sessions. Averages hide problems. A site-wide rage click rate of 3% might mean every page has a 3% rate, or it might mean one critical page has a 40% rate while the rest are at 1%.

Filters let you slice the data to find the pages, devices, and user segments where problems actually live. The difference between "our scroll depth is 52%" and "mobile users from Google on our pricing page scroll only 18%" is the difference between a vague concern and an actionable fix.

All Filter Categories in Clarity

Clarity organizes filters into several categories. Here's every filter type available and when to use each one.

User filters

• Device: Desktop, Mobile, Tablet. Essential for comparing UX across form factors.
• Browser: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, etc. Use when investigating rendering or JavaScript issues specific to a browser.
• Operating System: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux. Helps identify OS-specific bugs.
• Country: Filter by geographic location. Useful for localized content analysis or identifying CDN/performance issues by region.

Session filters

• Session duration: Filter by how long users stayed. Short sessions (<10 seconds) often indicate immediate bounces worth investigating.
• Page count: Number of pages viewed in a session. Single-page sessions are bounces; high page counts may indicate navigation confusion.
• Referrer: Traffic source (Google, social platforms, direct, specific URLs). Critical for understanding how traffic source affects behavior.
• Date range: Analyze specific time periods. Use to compare before/after a site change.

Page filters

• URL: Filter by specific page URL or URL pattern. Supports exact match and contains.
• Page title: Filter by the HTML title tag. Useful when URLs are not human-readable.

Behavior filters

These are Clarity's most powerful filters — they let you find sessions based on what users did, not just where they came from.

• Rage clicks: Sessions containing rapid repeated clicks on the same element.
• Dead clicks: Sessions where users clicked on non-interactive elements.
• Excessive scrolling: Sessions with abnormal scroll patterns (up-down-up-down).
• Quick backs: Sessions where users navigated to a page and immediately returned.
• JavaScript errors: Sessions where JS errors occurred. Invaluable for finding bugs that affect real users.
• Smart Events: Clarity's auto-detected interactions (form submissions, button clicks, media plays).

Combining Filters: Practical Examples

Individual filters are useful. Combined filters are where real insights emerge. Here are filter combinations that answer specific business questions.

1. "Why is our mobile conversion rate so low?"

Filters to combine:

• Device: Mobile
• URL: /checkout or /signup (your conversion page)
• Behavior: Dead clicks OR Rage clicks

Watch the filtered recordings. You'll likely see specific UI elements that don't work properly on mobile — buttons too close together, forms that scroll behind the keyboard, or CTAs below the fold that users never reach.

2. "What do organic search visitors struggle with?"

Filters to combine:

• Referrer: Contains "google.com"
• Session duration: Less than 30 seconds
• Behavior: Quick backs

These are users who came from Google, didn't find what they expected, and left immediately. Watching their recordings reveals whether the problem is content mismatch, page load speed, or a UX barrier.

3. "Is our new feature causing confusion?"

Filters to combine:

• URL: /feature-page (the page with the new feature)
• Date range: After feature launch date
• Behavior: Rage clicks + Excessive scrolling

Compare frustration signal rates before and after the launch by adjusting the date range filter. If rage clicks spiked after the change, you have a clear signal that the new design is causing problems.

4. "Which country has the worst user experience?"

Filters to combine:

• Country: Select one country at a time
• Behavior: Any frustration signal

Compare the percentage of frustrated sessions across different countries. High frustration in specific regions often points to CDN issues (slow loading), localization problems, or payment method limitations.

Saved Segments

When you find a filter combination that provides valuable insights, save it as a segment so you don't have to recreate it every time.

To save a segment in Clarity:

1. Apply your desired filter combination
2. Click the "Save" button near the filter bar
3. Name the segment descriptively (e.g., "Mobile Rage Clicks on Checkout")

Recommended segments to save:

• Frustrated Mobile Users: Device: Mobile + Rage clicks: Yes
• Bounced Organic Traffic: Referrer: Google + Page count: 1
• High-Value Pages with Issues: URL: /pricing OR /signup + Any frustration signal
• New vs. Returning: Use session count filters to separate first-time visitors from returners

Custom Tags: Adding Your Own Data to Clarity

Clarity's built-in filters cover device, location, and behavior. But what about your business-specific dimensions? That's where custom tags come in.

Custom tags let you attach arbitrary key-value pairs to Clarity sessions, which you can then filter by. This transforms Clarity from a generic analytics tool into one that understands your specific business context.

Setting up custom tags

Add custom tags via the Clarity JavaScript API:

// Tag sessions by user plan type
clarity("set", "plan", "pro");

// Tag by experiment variant
clarity("set", "experiment", "new-header-v2");

// Tag by user role
clarity("set", "role", "admin");

// Tag by content category
clarity("set", "category", "blog-post");

Practical custom tag examples

Filtering by custom tags

Once tags are set, they appear in Clarity's filter panel under "Custom Tags." You can combine them with any other filter. For example:

• plan = "free" + Rage clicks: Yes: Find frustrated free-tier users who might churn
• experiment = "variant-b" + URL: /checkout: See how the new checkout variant performs
• logged_in = "false" + Quick backs: Yes: Anonymous users who bounced immediately — likely need a better landing experience

Filters for Specific Analysis Scenarios

Landing page performance audit

For each major landing page, apply these filters and note the results:

1. URL: The landing page + Device: Mobile — Check mobile scroll depth and frustration
2. URL: The landing page + Referrer: Google — How do organic visitors behave?
3. URL: The landing page + Page count: 1 — What do bounced visitors do before leaving?
4. URL: The landing page + Dead clicks: Yes — Which elements look clickable but aren't?

Checkout funnel debugging

Apply filters progressively through your funnel:

1. URL: /cart — Baseline behavior on the cart page
2. URL: /cart + Rage clicks: Yes — Users frustrated during cart interaction
3. URL: /checkout + Device: Mobile — Mobile checkout experience
4. URL: /checkout + JavaScript errors: Yes — Technical failures during checkout

Content engagement analysis

For blog or content sites:

1. URL: Contains "/blog/" + Excessive scrolling: Yes — Articles where users scroll erratically (possibly searching for specific info)
2. URL: Contains "/blog/" + Session duration: >3 minutes — Highly engaged readers worth studying
3. URL: Contains "/blog/" + Referrer: Social — How social traffic engages vs. organic

Automating Filter-Based Analysis

Manually running through filter combinations every week is time-consuming. ClarityInsights automates this by pulling Clarity data through the API and running AI analysis across your key pages and segments, surfacing the most important findings in a weekly email report — so you get the insights without the manual filter work.