This document describes techniques and systems for radar-based gesture-recognition with context-sensitive gating and other context-sensitive controls. Sensor data from a proximity sensor (108) and/or a movement sensor (108) produces a context of a user equipment (102). The techniques and systems enable the user equipment (102) to recognize contexts when a radar system (104) can be unreliable and should not be used for gesture-recognition, enabling the user equipment (102) to automatically disable or “gate” the output from the radar system (104) according to context. The user equipment (102) prevents the radar system (104) from transitioning to a high-power state (1910) to perform gesture-recognition in contexts where radar data detected by the radar system (104) is likely due to unintentional input. By so doing, the techniques conserve power, improve accuracy, or reduce latency relative to many common techniques and systems for radar-based gesture-recognition.