Trello dreams coming true today… more label colors available!

[#1]

Update 27 September 2023 - We've decided to close this thread as there is a more recent article related to this topic. We welcome your feedback on The end of an era: bidding farewell to Trello's original theme.

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If you’re new to Trello, you might not have used labels yet (in which case, you’re going to want to- because they’re super powerful ways to filter information on your boards), or maybe you’ve started and gone label-happy and don’t want to re-use colors and feel a bit stuck.

Meanwhile, if you’ve been here in the community for a while, chances are you’ve seen someone make a comment about the “lack of label options” in Trello. While personally it’s never been an issue for me, it really does break my heart a little bit every time I see someone stop using Trello because they feel limited by the label options. 

Because of that, anytime someone asks “what’s one feature you wish Trello would implement?” - more labels has been my answer! Well my dream for all Trello users came true today, because Trello is officially releasing more label color options for a total of 30 colors now!

What do the new color options look like?

We’re going from 10 options to 30 by introducing more shades of the colors that you’ve grown to love. You can now get lighter and darker shades, unlocking even more opportunities to style your boards. 

Why am I telling you about this?

Those of you who know me know that I’m a pretty passionate Trello user and community member, and when I started seeing some questions about the label changes in Trello, the product team asked if I’d be interested in helping announce this launch to the community. To which I said…

Let’s see it in action

Want to see it instead of just reading about it? I recorded this quick demo showing what they look like and how to add them to your cards.

FAQs

I can’t answer everything, but I’ll do my best, and if you have additional questions, comment below and I’ll do my best to address them or make sure Atlassian folks are able to!

• How do I start using these new labels? Just go to your Trello boards and refresh the page! (Click the circle arrow next to your browser back button, or use the keyboard shortcut CMD/Ctrl + R). Then head to the labels section on your boards and you’ll see the new colors available when you click on the pencil icon next to a label, or click “create a new label”.

• Why did the style of labels change to use dark text? This was better for accessibility purposes, especially with the introduction of more colors because the bold white text does not look good with every shade of every color! 

• Can I go back to the old labels? Unfortunately for right now, that’s not an option, but if you’re missing the bolder colors on the labels, try using the darker versions of the label color options.

• Are any more color options going to be available? 🤫I can’t say for sure, but I know the Trello team is quite aware of the request for a billion label options and they’ll be closely monitoring how these changes are received and use that feedback to shape the future.

• What should I use Trello labels for? Oh honeyyyyy, where to start?? I love using labels to organize tasks by any category that I want to be able to group or filter my cards by, such as priority (or energy) levels, areas of the business, goals tasks contribute to, etc. But if you need more ideas, check out the new post on the Trello blog that explains these changes and gives some additional info about labels.

Update!

Trello wants to organize everyone's feedback on this so they can work on the next version of labels that hopefully addresses what everyone is looking to see. If you go to your Trello boards and underneath labels, you'll see a button for Leave Feedback. If you can go click that and share your feedback - preferably in a constructive way of what you'd like to see :) - I know that will be really helpful for the team to have all of that organized!

[Ami Fazchas]

Thanks, I hate it. The default is a pale pastel...why. The labels were bold because they're supposed to stick out.

Has there been a bug fix for rules not working after you change label colors, because this is about to really suck for most users if we have to sit for hours changing all our rules by hand.

[Brittany Joiner]

@Ami Fazchas hey there! eh, i think labels serve multiple purposes and everyone has different preferences with them. Some folks want it to stick out, some want it to be more subtle. Personally for me, I don't care how they look, i just want them to be able to filter by cards, so i think it's a tough line to make everyone happy with the style of labels here, and I don't envy the product managers having to make a call. 

As far as rules not working -do you have any specific rules that aren't working? It shouldn't change any of the rules because the original label colors still exist, more have just been added. So it shouldn't actually change any of the rules. I have a couple rules with labels and have not seen anything break, but if you see something that is broken please comment and we'll get to the bottom of it!

[Panagiotis]

Having the old colors back is a relief. I don't think I will ever use the pastel colors. As I stated to a previous post the only upgrade I would like to see on labels would be an RGB color palette. I wish we still had the bold text and the white font for darker colors because the thin black font doesn't make the label readable. 

At least the return of the old colors is a start to maintain the usability of the labels for many users that has based  their work on that. Hope our request will be heard in the future and maybe we see an update that makes our work easier, not harder.

[Ami Fazchas]

@Brittany Joiner Or they could just not make changes like this without telling everyone first or giving the option to stay on the old colors? 

Yes, the rules concerning labels are color and titled based, IE: if you change the "red 'due today'" label to Orange but you already have rules for actions regarding the "red 'due today'' label those rules no longer work. The labels aren't based just on the label text, but the color as well when you set up your automations. I've had it happen numerous times.

I also agree with the person above, the labels are to be quickly readable at a glance in contrast to the card text, and the new thin black text completely negates that function, and visually its a headache.

[Brittany Joiner]

@Panagiotis yeah the different shades will let it be darker instead of pastel, so hopefully that helps. I know the Trello team is closely monitoring feedback on this and doing the best they can... there's just a LOT of strong opinions on labels hahah. I know they appreciate your feedback and patience!

[Brittany Joiner]

@Ami Fazchas sorry im still confused - yes if you change the color of a label, it breaks a Butler rule... but that has always been a thing, long before the introduction of new colors? Are you saying that any of your labels automatically became another today when the labels changed? That should have happened as the original colors that were there still exist, so the rules shouldn't have broken. If you're saying that you changed a red label to orange color, that does change the rule... but has absolutely nothing to do with new colors being introduced. It's because you can have as many labels as you want a board, so a red label that says "due today" is different than a red label that says "due soon", and an orange label that says "due soon". Those are all three different labels, which is why I've personally always only needed a few colors for labels but you'd be surprised at how many people demand that Trello have more label color options.

If a rule is broken and you did not change the color of a label, can you please share a screenshot of it and/or report to it trello support? Because that shouldn't be happening, and it doesn't appear to have effected any of my rules so i can't really troubleshoot it without seeing a rule.

[Erica Lake]

More color options is great but the dot is ridiculous. It's extremely distracting and has no point. They need to give us the option to have the full color bars like we had before and can still have the different shades of color for people that want bold colors or pastel colors. THE DOT IS HORRIBLE!

[Ami Fazchas]

@Brittany Joiner No, I'm saying the new colors are absolutely useless and so is the "switching to darker colors" suggestion because of this. I've got 30+ labels, and many automation rules across two boards that literally keep the 6 person law firm I manage on track.  I'm stuck with the unreadable, unglanceable, pastel labels unless we stop work flow and have someone go through, change to the darker desired label colors and then go through automation and delete and reset the triggers for each and every rule to correspond with the new colors.

[Nathan Cobut]

Hey
I really like the update!

I just have one problem. The automations that remove the new labels don't work with the new colors.

Here is a video that shows it: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1ltfQwKuX4wfMxkzERvL4Qb6V7s7DFpsn

Thank you in advance, have a nice day/evening.

[Brittany Joiner]

@Nathan Cobut oh interesting, that does seem like a strange bug. thank you for the detailed screen share - i see exactly what you mean. Can you open a ticket with trello support? Head over here and someone should be able to diagnose that: https://trello.com/contact

[Nathan Cobut]

@Brittany JoinerI'll do it right now ^^

Thank you for your quick response.

[Brittany Joiner]

@Nathan Cobut no problem! i also tried it out on my board and same thing happened, so definitely not just you! hopefully they'll be able to resolve it quickly. 

[Hannah Moody]

Why try to fix something that isn't broken and was literally working just fine. I echo everyone above. The new labels are hard to read, pastel doesn't stand out and multiple automations are broken. I don't understand why they keep doing dumb stuff like this. The last one that tried to ruin our lives was having to download every single attachment on a card as opposed to being able to preview it in the card. Still can't print from the preview, but at least we threw a big enough stink they brought back the preview part. Still have to download the attachments to print which is so dumb.

Is there a way to let your customers choose between the new version and the old version? Maybe like a Bold Version and a Pastel Version? 

[Nathan Cobut]

@Hannah Moody 

I was also surprised to see that the colors were faded. But it just need to change them to dark and it solves the problem ^^.

At least, now there are many different colors hehe

[Lori]

I'm upset about this change because I now have to either accept labels that I don't like, or go through the work of changing them all. I use emojis at the beginning of many of my label titles, like an emoji dollar sign, an emoji of a phone, etc. They help me pick out labels quickly, in addition to the color. Now you added a new dot emoji to all my labels that conveys no additional useful information and is showing up in front of my other emojis. It's visual clutter and I really don't like it. Also, all this stuff about the hard choices the project managers had to make is not a valid point. They could have made the default color the one we all had before, instead of a new pastel color. Defaulting to what everyone already has would have been a smart choice, not a hard choice.

[Keith David Segura]

I do not like this change one bit. The labels are unscannable. I used to glance at the label color and I'd know what to do with the card. Not anymore. The text is too thin and hard to read, and it's hard enough staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day. The redesign seems to be a matter of aesthetic and not function. Add more colors, that's fine. But don't compromise function and usability. Please give us the option to go back to the plain, bold colors. 

[Donna]

I have just spent the best of 40-minutes changing all my boards to the darker version of the colour palette, yes its exciting to now have 3 levels for each colour however the depth of the colour has been changed over for a washed out look regardless of which level you choose 😥😢😭

This is a game changer as should I find this a major issue moving forward to continue to function at the higher level that I was excelling at with the older version, then perhaps I will need to begin researching for a more productive product replacement, sadly too as I had only just begun contemplating the Jira software as well...

I would also like to add [some 4hrs later] that if you have any automations that involve label colours then you need to edit every single one for the commands for it to continue to work, another 20-minutes lost to change this & this does not include any of the new jobs that I have added during today that I applied labels too, totally oblivious at the time of application that the commands were not working - this correction will need to be adjusted when I come across them as just too many to try and find amongst the hundreds of jobs I book in 😔😞😔😞  

[snzer0]

Make the labels more prominent, with text bolded and the colors more visible. The new change was pushed on all users so I hope the team is looking at the feedback and open to making changes to improve the label colors based on this. I would prefer more colors but make the colors bold or at least make those the default. In other words the darker version of the colors should be defaults now. 

The other issue this breaks the keyboard shortcut keys for adding colors. Bold/Darker colors default, make the text bolder and larger and the label size larger. I think those simple things will help. 

[Mr Obrien Michael]

To label and stick out is the point of a label. The new labels are hard to understand. This ends the use of labels on a card to mark it. Allow the option to bring the bright colors back. It's even more difficult to discern f.lux and other modifiers. It's like a soft notebook. If you can, please offer even more bright and lively then the original labels, because some manager is tasked to do so. Think of it as pink and yellow postits. Thank you!

[Philipp Ritz]

We need flashy colors. 

[Ryan Kerswell]

I prefer the original colours as its helped to distinguish high priority work to medium and low priority in our case, now these colours are so pastely at a glance. Would be nice to have the original colours still there and the pastel colours as additional options rather than replacing them completely.

Also the dot serves no purpose and is in the way especially if you use unicode symbols like we do within our labels to help with label visibility.

Here is an example of how our labels would look now and what we had setup before which was much easier to view and see at a glance for us:

Please can you add the original colours and layouts back in and have these pastel colours as additional rather than instead of.

[Edouard Albert]

I like the idea: having more color options but I really dislike the execution. The colors you have chosen are too much alike. @Trello you totally missed an important aspect of this color label feature: to be able to distinguish in one glance a label from another.

[Matthijs]

Labels don't stand out anymore.

I will squint my eyes from now on.

[Kinokee]

The new labels provide negative value, It's the second time in a couple years that bold labels were changed to a washed out pastel and I don't understand why.

Now I stare at my boards and can't differentiate anything at glance causing it to take more energy to do the same amount of work. Even the new shades are just various levels of washed out color of bland text fields and don't add any sense or variation of urgency or priority.

Labels are more than text filters, they're used to IMMEDIATELY identify items at a glance. Staring and mentally processing which light grey is slightly less grey than the other very slightly darker grey doesn't help.

edit: I just realized keypad automation was removed. I hate this change too. If anything additional functionality should have been added to by allowing user ordered labels to match keys instead of a predetermined order. Improving efficiency generally means ADDING automation and reducing user workload.

edit 2: Just realized the dot adds additional space to my labels which adds up as I use multiple labels on some cards. I don't understand why I don't have an option to remove the dot. I'm all for service for the minority and user accessibility but what purpose does it serve the average user who doesn't need it as it's the same (unwanted) symbol on every label?

[Mark Leary]

Absolutely awful, too pastel.  The whole point is for them to stand out.

We also use Manatee Trello to automate our workflows but this has now stopped working!  Trello no longer works for us so looking for alternatives.

edit: Why remove the keypad feature to add labels?  Trello goes backwards yet again.