Hotkeys for off-colour labels
Asked by Vongsawat:

Are there no hotkeys for assigning off-colour labels? By which I mean the (relatively newer) light-colour and dark-colour labels.

I see no mention of it in the [Shortcuts](https://trello.com/shortcuts) page.

But it seems like such a no-brainer to assign it to Shift+Number or something similar, or Alt+ or RShift+, that I keep second guessing myself.

And if it really doesn't exist... It really should?..


Answers:
author: Luciana Munhoz
body: Hi there! That's a good question! I did some digging here and I see that the hotkeys are the same for a color "group". Like 1 it will be for light green/green/dark green.

The way it works is that the hotkey will work for the labels you've added to your list.

I did a small video (below) so you can see what I mean.

In the video I didn't create a label using green, so when I pressed 1, it asked me if I wanted to create a label with that color (and I could use any green). Now if I pressed 2, it will show me that I have 2 yellow labels to choose from (one that I created with light yellow and dark yellow). So from there, I can select which one I need.

Hope that helps you!

![LabelColorKeys.gif](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/248502iDD1271F34AB2F71B/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "LabelColorKeys.gif")

comments: author: Vongsawat
body: Thanks for the reply.

While it may make sense for operations that use a lot of labels, its a lot more awkward for more streamlined boards.

In operations that attempt to use labels concisely, having to manually pick the correct label from a short list defeats the purpose of having hotkeys at all at that point. Might as well just click on the Labels button and choose from the small collection of labels there. Its 2 clicks either way, and you don't have to remember the hotkey for the latter.

(In label-heavy boards, the 2 click process is still an improvement over 3 clicks and repeatedly skimming over tens of labels every time of course)

What happens though, is that hotkey labels become high-demand. And all the lesser used labels get relegated to one or two colours whose hotkeys will never be used. Its both very limiting in function, as well as constraining in aesthetics. With the majority of the lighter/darker variants becoming off-limits.

*** ** * ** ***

Now, if each colour had its own hotkey, that are similar within its own colour group. Suddenly that makes hotkeys amazingly useful. And easy to teach to users. ie an orange label can denote a department, while light-dark denotes priority. And a non-power user just has to remember 2-3 hotkeys that are relevant to them. Instead of going through a 3-click process to face the entirety of the label system at once, gets intimidated, and refrain from labeling.

Just feels like a very easy solution with no downsides. Other than figuring out what key to pair with the hotkeys. And seems in-line with Trello's current ideology on labels.


author: Luciana Munhoz
body: Thank you for your feedback!! :)

Indeed it would be great to have a hotkey for each color! I'll pass your suggestion on to our dev team for consideration. While I can't guarantee if that would be implemented, it would bring to their attention that users as asking for it.

Also, I'd like to correct myself for my previous reply! When you press the hotkey numbers to select a color, a pop-up will only be displayed when a "plain" color label is not created yet (in case you want to add one).

For example, If a yellow label is already created and you press 2, it will automatically add the yellow label to the card, otherwise, a pop-up will appear if you want to create one.

But unfortunately, there isn't a hotkey number specific to each color variation (light/dark) yet, just for the "main" colors.

An alternative is to use the `l` key (lowercase L) to show a label popover containing a larger range of labelsHere's a quick guide for shortcuts: <https://blog.trello.com/trello-keyboard-shortcuts-infographic>


author: gustavo costa
body: Greetings everyone,

I'm encountering a similar problem as [@Vongsawat](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3989989). I recently attempted to personalize the labels on our company board but found that the hotkeys are set to specific colors, and there is no way to change them.

It would also greatly enhance the user experience if we could customize the hotkey numbers for our labels, such as assigning green to 4 and red to 1, etc.

I appreciate [@Vongsawat](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3989989) for bringing up this topic for discussion.


author: Luciana Munhoz
body: Hi Gustavo! Welcome to the community! Thanks for sharing your feedback with us! I wanted to let you know that I see that we have this as a feature request in our backlog, so I have added your feedback as an official "+1" to that request! Hope this helps! If you have any additional insights, please don't hesitate to share. Thanks!


Tags: label