Can I show all labels by default in the "Labels" sub-menu on a task?

[Slaveyko Slaveykov]

Can I show all labels by default in the "Labels" sub-menu on a task?

I used to be able to see all Labels by default in identical order every time the sub-menu was opened. Now I have to click the "Show More Labels" button to see them all and ordered. I find "Suggestions" to make this even worse, as there are now two lists I need to scan at a glance. Furthermore, I have the muscle memory to know the order of tasks. That is now worthless. I understand this seems like a minor issue but it costs me a few extra seconds and 1 more click to do something I could do in 2 clicks and about a second. I have 800+ tasks and the project is continuously growing so this will continue to be an issue.

[Lara · Accepted solution]

Hi all (@Slaveyko Slaveykov @Cody Gatlin @Tom G_ @Ifor @johndatadavies),

Thank you for the feedback.

While this exact functionality isn’t currently available in Trello, I have gone ahead and created a feature suggestion for you with our product team which you can access here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/TRELLO-404

I would also recommend you visit that suggestion, log in with your Atlassian account, and click Start watching this issue on the right panel. This will help our product and engineering team understand which functionalities our users are interested in. Also, when the ticket is updated by our product team, you'll be notified via email.

You can learn more about this by reading our Implementation of New Features Policy.

If you have any questions about this suggestion, any additional information you would like to share, or any comments on our new features policy, please let us know!

All the best,

Lara
The Trello Team

[johndatadavies]

Thanks Lara. Could you link to this thread in the feature suggestion so the product team have more context please?. The way it's currently worded could be confusing — there is already the ability to view all labels, we would like it to always show all labels as a permanent option.

[Lara]

Hi John,

That's been done! I've added a link to this Community Post as an internal comment on the feature suggestion.

Please let us know if you have any other questions, and we'll be happy to help.

All the best,

Lara
The Trello Team

[johndatadavies]

Hello again, just a little bump from me to ask if this has been looked at?

I love Trello, have been an avid user for many years and it's an essential part of my life, at work and outside of work. But I'm having to paste in the below JS hack / workaround every single time I use Trello, which is every day, and it's driving me insane.

It's really such an annoying speedbump in the core workflow of Trello and the solution to fix it should probably take half an hour to code up. Is Trello still in active development as a product? Or is all the work going into Jira now?

Invite me to the repo and I'll do it for you if you like (lol). Pretty please?

[Lara]

Hi John,

We're still actively tracking the feature suggestion over at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/TRELLO-404. I can assure you that Trello is still in active development!

It'd be best to add your comment or feedback as comment on Trello-404 so that our product team have insight.

I would also recommend reading our Implementation of New Features Policy.

All the best,

Lara
The Trello Team

[johndatadavies]

Are there any Trello devs looking at these posts?

Please give us the option:

[x] always show all labels

Workflow without this option:

1. Click 'add a card'
2. Type description and hit enter
3. Click the pencil menu, select 'edit labels'
4. Scan the list of frequently used labels (that is slightly different to the last time it appeared) to see if the ones you want all happen to be there, and click those that are
5. Click 'show more' (because inevitably one of the labels you need isn't there)
6. Realise the labels are now in a totally different order and scan them all again to find the ones you still want and click them.

Workflow with this option selected:

1. Click 'add a card'
2. Type description and hit enter
3. Click the pencil menu, select 'edit labels'
4. Scan the list of labels for the labels you want and click them.

Assuming you are not insane and don't have 100s of infrequently used labels, the second workflow scenario is clearly superior.

A crucial part of the planning process for any project is to have well-defined and holistic task categories. While catering for people that litter their planning space with far too many ill-conceived labels could be considered compassionate design, the side effect is that those people who are well organised have to suffer disproportionately.

So please, give us the option:

[x] always show all labels

PS. Thanks to the Trello devs for all the hard work, recent updates have been great and it's nice to see Trello being given some love.

[Tom G_]

Sorry, I meant to reply.

[Lara]

Hi Slaveyko,

Thanks for reaching out!

You can disable suggested actions on your account settings: https://trello.com/u/my/account.

When you view the labs modal, we show all of the labels that have been applied to the card and when you click 'Show more labels', it'll show you the other labels. Just to confirm, were you able to view all labels previously (i.e. non-selected labels appeared in the list)? 

Lara
The Trello Team

[Slaveyko Slaveykov]

Hey, Lara,

Thanks for the quick response :)

Yes, I could see all labels previously.
When I open the modal I see most but not all labels. I see all labels when I click "Show more labels".
Thank you for the instructions but, I've disabled Suggestions already.

I may have rambled a bit (my apologies), so to make this a bit clearer let me reiterate:
- I'd like to be able to see all labels in the modal by default (without clicking the "Show more labels" button).

Thank you,

Slav

[Lara]

Hi Slav,

Thanks for the additional context!

I've reached out to our team about this and they confirmed that they did reduce the page size on the labels popover, as it took up too much vertical space to fit on most laptop screens.

While the popover never showed all labels by default, the page size was bigger by 2 labels.

That said, I definitely understand this extra time to view all labels can impact your workflow, and I have shared this feedback with our team.

Please let us know if you have any other questions, and we'll be happy to help.

All the best,

Lara
The Trello Team

[Slaveyko Slaveykov]

Interesting! I could have sworn it was showing all of them previously but I trust your tech team. Might be I just noticed it because I included a couple more labels recently. Either way - apologies. However, I would like to suggest an option to show all labels by default - could be placed around the suggestions toggle in settings.

Thank you!

[Lara]

Hi Slav,

No problem at all! I've flagged this suggestion with the team 👍

All the best,

Lara
The Trello Team

[Daniel Tan]

could just have used a scroll bar or display them in a grid

[johndatadavies]

Would just like to chime in and add a +1 for an option to show all labels by default. It causes a break in my flow and a minor annoyance every single time I create a task.

If there's not enough vertical space for the full list of labels, it could just scroll, like it already does after you've hit 'show more labels'.

I can see why the button was added, maybe if somebody has a project with 100s of labels and has a hard time finding their often used ones, this feature would make sense. This approach caters for those people with disastrous label management habits but means everyone else has to suffer! Just let the messy people sort out their own mess, I say.

Or make it optional, please :)

[Tom G_]

Hello,

I'm having the same annoyance with this label system.

You (Lara of Atlassian team) mentioned that they made the label screen smaller to fit on laptop screens, however this does not seem to be true. Check out these screenshots to see just how silly the design choice is (and ANNOYING AF to use).

With suggestions enabled. This is the default, and also much larger than if it just showed all my labels. Also, why does it show duplicates? Shouldn't the suggested labels be hidden from the main list if you're so concerned with vertical space?

Suggestions disabled. As one might expect, it's smaller than with suggestions enabled. But why not make it at least as big as it was with suggestions enabled?

All labels shown. Smaller than with suggestions enabled. This should be the default when suggestions are disabled.

[colinmac]

+1 This is awful UI design. You just added an extra scroll & click to almost every label assignment.

PLEASE remove this "feature" or at least make it optional.

[Ifor]

Yes, please could you remove the "Show All Labels" button, show all labels by default and make the list scrollable.

It would also be nice if the label list order could be personalised and saved. As mentioned above, having labels moving around each time you want to add one to a card is pretty frustrating.

[johndatadavies]

I got so sick of this endless faff I ended up writing an awful hack to solve the problem. Open the JS console on your Trello board (cmd+option+i / ctrl+shift+i), paste this in and hit enter:

window.onpointerup = () => {setTimeout(() => {document.querySelectorAll('button').forEach(e => {if(e.innerText == 'Show more labels') e.click()})}, 100)};

Any time you click anywhere on the page, a timer will fire 1/10th of a second afterwards, check to see if there are any buttons with the text 'Show more labels' inside them, and click them for you.

This is obviously terrible and you have to re-enter the line every time you reload or restore the page, but it works. I guess you could make a Chrome plugin that does this (never made a plugin and not sure what's involved).

[Ifor]

Nicely done! I'm also not sure how to make this permanent, but I made a small edit -  using an `onpointerup` event instead of `onpointerdown` worked more consistently for me.

[johndatadavies]

Good point! Edited the previous post.

[Tom G_]

Brilliant work @johndatadavies! Thank you!

@Ifor You can use Tampermonkey to make it 'permanent'.

I always forget about Tampermonkey. But now that you've inspired me, maybe I can reverse those awful changes they've made to the CSS in the last few months...

[Ifor]

@Tom G_Thanks, yeah I'm aware of Tampermonkey, but I'm not sure if it's possible to install it on the Trello OSX app, have you managed to install it within an Electron app?

[Tom G_]

Sorry @Ifor I only use it in a web browser.

[Slaveyko Slaveykov]

Whoa, thanks for that @johndatadavies, you're right, it's not ideal, but it'll have to do for now. And thanks for the Tampermonkey shoutout @Tom G_

[Cody Gatlin]

Thank you geniuses for your brilliant workaround for this horrible UI design! Using tampermonkey with this js code is great fix 🙏

[David Bower]

With all due respect, may I ask @Lara what the hold up is on making these excellent modification suggestions @johndatadavies since there is a clear consensus?

[johndatadavies]

@David Bower here's the ticket that I think the Trello devs might be able to see if it gets enough comments and +1s https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/TRELLO-404