5.4 Priorities

If you use Org mode extensively, you may end up with enough TODO items that it starts to make sense to prioritize them. Prioritizing can be done by placing a priority cookie into the headline of a TODO item, like this

*** TODO [#A] Write letter to Sam Fortune

By default, Org mode supports three priorities: ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. ‘A’ is the highest priority. An entry without a cookie is treated just like priority ‘B’. Priorities make a difference only for sorting in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda); outside the agenda, they have no inherent meaning to Org mode. The cookies can be highlighted with special faces by customizing org-priority-faces.

Priorities can be attached to any outline node; they do not need to be TODO items.

C-c ,

Set the priority of the current headline (org-priority). The command prompts for a priority character ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’. When you press SPC instead, the priority cookie is removed from the headline. The priorities can also be changed “remotely” from the timeline and agenda buffer with the , command (see Agenda commands).

S-up     (org-priority-up)

S-down     (org-priority-down)

Increase/decrease priority of current headline⁵⁷. Note that these keys are also used to modify timestamps (see Creating timestamps). See also Conflicts, for a discussion of the interaction with shift-selection-mode.

You can change the range of allowed priorities by setting the options org-highest-priority, org-lowest-priority, and org-default-priority. For an individual buffer, you may set these values (highest, lowest, default) like this (please make sure that the highest priority is earlier in the alphabet than the lowest priority):

#+PRIORITIES: A C B