It is endemic to semi-arid southern Australia, where it inhabits mallee, tall heath and associated low eucalypt woodland.

[4] They also occur in yellow gum woodland with dense thickets of 'totem-poles' or violet honey-myrtle on low-lying flats and gullies in mallee areas.

[3] Purple-gaped honeyeaters feed mainly on nectar and insects,[2] especially from flowering mallee eucalypts,[4] and banksias.

[3] Purple-gaped honeyeaters build nests as a small cup of bark strips, grass and down, bound with spider web and egg sacs, slung in a horizontal fork or from slender branchlets within dense foliage (usually broombush or eucalypts), normally less than three metres above the ground.

[3] The purple-gaped honeyeater is vulnerable to clearing of mallee, which destroys habitat by removing food plants and nesting sites.