Jira Labels Best Practices: Smarter Ways to Tag and Organize Work

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Labels in Jira are a flexible way to add tags or keywords to your work items. Unlike components or versions, labels can be created on the fly and used to classify work items in a more dynamic way.

In this guide, we’ll explore:

• How to add, search, and remove labels in Jira

• Common pitfalls when using labels

• Best practices for keeping labels clean and useful

• A quick look at tools that can help with large-scale label management

Why use labels in Jira?

Labels are especially useful when you need to track aspects of work items that don’t quite fit into components or versions .

Example use case :
Imagine a mobile app project with components like frontend, backend, and data objects. These divisions are helpful, but sometimes you’ll want to go further:

• Tagging work items related to a specific feature

• Tracking tickets linked to a certain customer

• Highlighting items for a support queue

Labels make this possible without adding more custom fields or restructuring your project.

How to add a new Jira label

1. Open the work item.

2. Go to the Labels field.

3. Start typing your label → press Enter (or pick from the suggested list).

🔎 Note: Labels can’t contain spaces. Use hyphens or underscores instead (e.g., user_acceptance_test).

How to search for work items by label

There are two easy ways:

• Use the Labels field in Jira search.

• Click directly on a label in a work item → this takes you to the issue navigator with all items tagged the same.

👉 Tip : Out of the box, Jira doesn’t let you filter for work items that have only one label. That can make reporting tricky.

How to remove Jira labels

• To remove a label from a single work item: click the small x next to it.

• To remove a label across multiple work items: perform a bulk change to clean it up project-wide .

Common pitfalls with labels

Because any user can add labels, projects often end up with:

• Duplicate variations (login vs Login)

• Inconsistent casing (user vs User)

• Synonyms or unclear abbreviations (ready_for_UAT vs ready_for_uat)

This can quickly make labels less useful for searching and reporting .

Best practices for Jira labels

To get the most value out of labels, share these rules with your team:

• ✅ Add a label only if the connection doesn’t already exist elsewhere (e.g, don’t duplicate epics).

• ✅ Check if a label already exists before creating a new one.

• ✅ Standardize casing (all lowercase works well).

• ✅ Avoid abbreviations unless the team agrees on them and they’re documented.

Bonus: managing labels at scale

If your Jira site has been around for a while, you might already have hundreds of labels  many of them messy. While Jira provides only basic add/remove functions, the Marketplace offers apps like Colored Label manager (built by Atlassway) that make label management much easier.

For example, some tools allow you to:

• Merge or rename duplicate labels

• Add descriptions to explain label meaning

• Bulk-add or bulk-remove labels

• See label usage across projects

• Export labels for reporting

These can save time and help keep your instance clean.

Final thoughts

Labels are simple but powerful when used with discipline. With clear team agreements and occasional cleanups, they can become a lightweight way to classify and track work across Jira projects.

Have you tried any strategies for keeping labels under control in your team? Share them in the comments , the community always has creative solutions!