Hide/Remove Mint.com Default Categories

Posted by Stephen Schrauger on Friday, 6 March 2015

I love Mint.com. I've been using it for over 5 years now, and it has helped me keep track of multiple bank accounts and credit cards, giving me one simple location to manage my finances.

One useful feature is the categorization of transactions. Mint lets you set up budgets based on categories and sub-categories. It has a nice graph showing how far along you are in the month in relation to your budget usage.

It comes with many categories by default, and you can add new sub-categories if you want to group a specific set of expenses. For example, I (unfortunately) have to pay tolls, which are automatically charged to my credit card; Mint makes it easy to track my monthly usage and help me plan for future months.

However, while you can add as many sub-categories as you want, you cannot remove any built-in default categories. I don't own a business, so the Business category and all its sub-categories are useless and serve to clutter my list of choices. Similarly, I don't have kids, another major category. While I do have plenty of Bills & Utilities, I don't have a Home Phone or Television bill, so those sub-categories will never apply.

I finally got fed up with the overload of choices, so I wrote a UserScript that allows you to hide specific categories or sub-categories. Go to the project page to see installation instructions for your particular desktop browser.

To modify your preferences, go into the 'Add/Edit Categories' popup, then click on 'Edit Hidden Categories'. All the categories will now have checkboxes. Simply check the box next to the category or sub-category, and it will be crossed out. Then, clicking either 'Save Hidden Categories' or "I'm Done" will cause them to be completely hidden.

Your preferences are saved on Mint's servers (using a custom sub-category), so your hidden categories will be automatically loaded on any computer that has the script installed. It doesn't actually delete the category from Mint's code, so they will show up on any computer without the script.

Any transactions marked with hidden categories will remain unchanged. If you ever want to restore a hidden category, simply go through the same steps and uncheck the checked box to bring it back.

If you find any problems with the code, feel free to leave a comment here or open a new issue on GitHub. If there are any features you want added, let me know! And if you are a fellow programmer, you can always fork the project; it is 100% free and open source.

Comments

Howard

Wed, 03/15/2017 - 15:27

Hi, well done, this sounds like a great improvement. My difficulty is similar but not exactly the same. I want to replace the useless top-level categories with ones that are useful to me. Like you I don't need the Kids or Business categories but I do want to list, for example, Home Improvement on the top level. When it comes right down to it I suppose all I really need to do it be able to rename those top categories. Any ideas about that? Thanks, nice job!

Amias

Sat, 09/09/2017 - 01:00

My main issue with the default categories is trying to use them on the Mobile app. Like you, I don't have kids or a business, and I never plan to - even if I did, I could make new categories for those myself. I like the idea of your workaround, but I'm disappointed that it probably won't work for my main usage of Mint.

Kristen Chin

Sat, 03/10/2018 - 09:45

I installed the script to Chrome, but I don't get the link that allows me to hide/edit categories on the upper right. Restarted my browser several times. Do you have any advice on what went wrong? :), Kristen

Susan

Wed, 12/26/2018 - 13:14

This has been bugging me forever and I'm so grateful to have found your script! Happy new year!

Leanne

Tue, 01/08/2019 - 00:10

Thank you so, so much for creating this! I had begun searching for new applications rather than Mint when I started seeing the limitations I was going to face. Mint should totally incorporate this into their application. The category choices they have are just far too complex. Thank you again for solving this problem for me!

Ayan Sarkar

Wed, 08/05/2020 - 12:30

Hi - I installed the extension and clicked all the cetagories to hide. Now I am unable to get back to the menu to edit them. I can off course, turn off the extension but then I don't have the option to hide any of the categories. How do I get unstuck from this? Can I delete all the settings and start over?

Thanks, Ayan 

 

 

stephen

Thu, 08/06/2020 - 22:53

Here's how you restore your categories. Disable the extension. Then go to the Add/Edit Categories link that Mint gives you. Go to the Uncategorized category, and you should see 3 custom subcategories listed beginning with #!1, #!2, and #!3. Delete those custom subcategories and save the changes.

Then you can reactivate the extension, and all the categories should be visible again. Those 3 custom categories contain your preferences for the extension, so clearing them out should reset all the hidden category selections.

https://github.com/schrauger/mint.com-customize-default-categories#prefe...