Can Trello please, finally, add the ability to color lists natively?

[Alexis]

I'd like to set the background color of an entire list. (but not the cards within it, which could either remain white, or be translucent)

Is this in Premium? Is it coming some day? It seems like it's been consistently asked for since 2017 and I don't understand why such a basic, obvious feature for visual organization is left out while things like dropdown list items can apparently be individually colored.

The Trello power-up "List Limits" lets me hack a list to be yellow- can a power-up that lets me pick a color be added? (I started down the rabbit hole of potentially writing a user power-up, but it looks way more involved than I expected and I still couldn't find any reference to re-styling core elements)

I DON'T want a Chrome addon. That doesn't work cross-platform.

I tried a card with a "cover" color, but this wastes vertical space and is fragile. Trello also insists that the card have a title- it even rejects a non-breaking space. It's frustrating that Trello seems to fight me tooth and nail to make it as awkward as possible to simulate this basic concept.

Are there any options I missed? Is this on the way? Is there actually a way to write a power-up to do this?

[Oliver S · Accepted solution]

Some great news! List colors and collapsible lists are coming to Trello! Check out our recent post for more details - https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-articles/Do-your-boards-have-you-feeling-the-blues-Prepare-to-spark-new/ba-p/2618194

[Felix · Accepted solution]

Hey @Alexis

answering your questions first:

1. There's no power-ups, other than List Limits, that can color the list, currently. It's also not something that's exposed to power-ups, so the only third party way to do this, as far as I'm aware is with a browser extension.
2. The Trello team's been exploring list colors for a while, in various forms. We've had internal versions of the app with this feature before. It would help to understand the use-case you have for this feature. Is it to indicate a status of the items in the list? Is it to indicate list status itself? Purely aesthetic? Would you want the list color to be dynamic (based on some computed value, day of the week, list name, the items in the list, etc) or static (you set it once, it remains the same color until it's changed by a user on the board)?

[Dreamsuite Mike]

@felix This question has come up several times from my clients.  It is often mentioned that this IS possible to an extent in Monday.com and ClickUp, which tend to be the leading competitors to Trello.  The colours of the lists are related to the group or status respectively and in Monday.com, these can be conditionally changed.

However, I think Trello should be true to itself, and the unique element should be that the colouring be set in a static way because I have a lot of clients who would use it to segregate stages of their workflow or having a board that contains static information at 1 end and workflow (moving) parts on the other side...

Adding automation could allow colour change based on conditions such as number of cards in list, if the list has cards that are due soon or overdue, matching list colours to dominant labels etc...

While we are at it, programatically changing card cover colour via automation would be welcome too.

@Alexis You can use card covers to simulate list colouring, I do this a lot...

You can pin them the top of lists using the great video guide by @Brittany Joiner 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP9qlSJDpds

Taking it further, try out Advance Card Covers to make them look even better

https://trello.com/power-ups/63335b84732512002ab83405/advanced-card-covers-tiny-power-ups-club

There is a Chrome (and edge) extension that could do this.  I've never used it but worth a look:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/list-highlighter-for-trel/haljojofdmnhcjenglgbejijfppbhmnn?hl=en

Hope this helps

Mike

[Alexis]

@Felix 

For me, I literally just want static colors to help my mind stay organized. Color-coding is one of the best tools for me. I would also expect that, at some point, the functionality would also be exposed for automation and power-ups but day 1 I would be thrilled to just set a color and forget about it.

This is what I'm doing so far, but it's not perfect as they can scroll off the top in addition to bieng fragile in other ways:

@Dreamsuite Mike Thanks for the links, I'll look into the tweaks you suggested :) I specifically can't use Chrome extensions because I use the Android app a decent amount too.

[Dreamsuite Mike]

While not a perfect solution, I think getting them pinned to the top will help you.  Give me a shout if you do want some assistance with he automations for that 

[JJ Jones]

@Alexis since Felix is saying Chrome 3rd party is the way to do this, the Chrome plugin Pro4Trello is what I use for list colors. Note that the theme you use in Chrome will effect the color of the cards themselves. I use a dark theme which is why the cards show as dark. I use Dashcards power-up for the header cards to keep track of how many projects I have on each list on this board and on other boards (in Project Tools).

You are correct that Pro4Trello doesn't work cross platform. If you share your board with others, unless they have the same Chrome extension, they won't see your list colors. The Dashcards will still show, as those are power-ups.

Hope this helps. 

JJ

PS-Pro4Trello has many other options, other than list colors, that are worth exploring. I'm in no way affiliated with them. Just a user's opinion.