First Time Event Tracker

🚧 Note: We are currently in the process of reworking our app server and have therefore disabled new installs of the first time event tracker. You can still analyze first time events using HogQL.

For example, to get a list of users who completed the $pageview event for the first time today, create an SQL insight and use the following SQL statement:

SQL

SELECT distinct_id
FROM events
WHERE event = '$pageview'
    AND (distinct_id, timestamp) IN (
        SELECT distinct_id, min(timestamp)
        FROM events
        WHERE event = '$pageview'
        GROUP BY distinct_id
    )
    AND toDate(timestamp) = today()
GROUP BY distinct_id

As another example, to get the first ever occurrence of the “user signed up” custom event, use the following SQL statement:

SQL

SELECT 
   distinct_id, 
   min(timestamp) as first_occurrence
FROM events
WHERE event = 'user signed up'
GROUP BY distinct_id
ORDER BY first_occurrence
LIMIT 1

Either of these can be customized to get different events or properties, such as replacing distinct_id with properties.$current_url or count(). See an example use case in our “How to analyze first and last touch attribution” tutorial.

If there is functionality around first time event tracking you want but don’t see a way to do, let us know by asking a question in our community.

What does this app do?

This app adds two new properties to events which you specify:

is_event_first_ever
is_event_first_for_user

Using these events, you can track if each event is the first time that event has run for a individual user, the first time it has run ever, both of these, or neither.

Note: For Pageview and Identify events, use the event names $pageview and $identify respectively.

Requirements

The First Time Event Tracker requires either PostHog Cloud, or a self-hosted PostHog instance running version 1.30.0 or later.

Not running 1.30.0? Find out how to update your self-hosted PostHog deployment!

Installation

Visit the 'Apps' page in your instance of PostHog.
Search for 'First Time Event Tracker' and select the app, press Install.
Follow the on-screen steps to configure the app.

This app will only work on events ingested after the app was enabled.

Does this app work retroactively?

No. This app will only work on events ingested after the app was enabled.

This means it will register events as being the first if there were events that occurred before it was enabled. To mitigate this, you could consider renaming the relevant events and creating an action that matches both the old event name and the new one.

Configuration

FAQ

Is the source code for this app available?

PostHog is open-source and so are all apps on the platform. The source code for the First Time Event Tracker is available on GitHub.

Who created this app?

We'd like to thank PostHog team member Yakko Majuri for creating the First Time Event Tracker. Thanks Yakko!

Who maintains this app?

This app is maintained by PostHog. If you have issues with the app not functioning as intended, please let us know!

What if I have feedback on this app?

We love feature requests and feedback! Please tell us what you think! to tell us what you think.

What if my question isn't answered above?

We love answering questions. Ask us anything via our community forum, or drop us a message.