Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry shrubland and Mediterranean-type shrubby vegetation.

The grey tit was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[2][3] Gmelin based his account on the "black-breasted titmouse" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds.

Latham had examined a specimen from the Cape of Good Hope that formed part of the collection of the naturalist Joseph Banks.

[4] The grey tit was moved to the genus Melaniparus based on the results of a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 that found that a group of species formed a distinct clade.