Custom events

A custom event is a saved, reusable event that combines two or more existing events with an OR clause, so any of those events counts as the same step in an analysis. For example, a custom event can show users who, after receiving a push notification, either played a song or searched for one as their next step.

You create a custom event in the Events panel from one or more pre-existing events. Doing so tells Amplitude to combine those pre-existing events and count any user activity for them as activity for the new custom event. This approach helps when you want an easy way to track activity on related or similar events, like whether a visitor has fired either the view_landing_page_1 or view_landing_page_2 events.

In the image above, Play or Search Song is a custom event consisting of the Play Song event, the Search Song event, and an OR clause to connect the two. Any user who triggers either the Play Song event or the Search Song event has converted that second step.

Before you begin

• Only admins, managers, and members can create custom events.
• You can use custom events in Event Segmentation, Funnel Analysis, Retention Analysis, Lifecycle, Stickiness, Impact Analysis, Journeys, Pathfinder, Conversion Driver, Experiment Results, and Compass charts.
• You can't query on custom events in Redshift.
• All custom events have the prefix [Custom] before the event name in your charts.
• Editing or renaming custom events used in other charts breaks those charts. Amplitude continues to query the named value until you manually change it on any charts that use it. Amplitude displays a warning when you make any edits to custom events.
• Querying event properties on custom events is possible only if the property applies to all events. If you try to create a custom event with five different events and want to see the location values from all those events, you need to instrument the location event property to all the individual events making up the custom event.

Group two existing events into a single custom event

To group two events, follow these steps:

1. In Amplitude Data's left-hand rail, select Events. Then select Create Custom Event.

2. In the modal that appears, select the events you want to analyze as a single event. You can set different filters on these events, in case the analysis requires a more granular view of the selected events.

At this point, you can use this event for further analyses in Amplitude. Select the new event in the Custom category in the appropriate chart drop-down menus.

Custom events and transformed events