Colors and the Color Legend

Every card has a color. With the color legend, a color also means something, for example the kind of work a card needs. Then you can sort your cards by color, just as you sort them by list and by context.

Pick a card color

The color picker appears in the New Card sheet and in the card’s inspector:

• Tap one of your favorite colors. The selected one shows a check mark, and its meaning appears below the favorites. On Mac hovering over a favorite shows its meaning too.
• Color opens the system color picker, so you can choose any color.
• Or type a hex value into the #RRGGBB field.
• The star button saves the current color as a new favorite.
• Edit Color Favorites… lets you change or remove favorites, Add Favorite and Restore Default Colors. You find the same under Color Favorites in Settings.

There are ten favorites to start with: the classic yellow, blue, pink and white plus six soft colors. Favorites are kept on each device; the legend syncs.

The color legend

The legend gives a favorite color a meaning: a name, an optional description and optional keywords. iKanban starts with a suggestion based on the kind of work:

• Yellow: Quick win, under 15 minutes.
• Blue: Deep work, needs focus and time.
• Pink: Communication, meetings and people.
• Green: Errand, out and about.
• Violet: Creative, ideas and drafts.
• Grey: Waiting, blocked or routine.

You can change every meaning, remove it or use colors for something else entirely, such as customers. The legend syncs between your devices.

Find cards by color

In the Workflow area of the sidebar, Colors lists every meaning with its number of cards, plus Uncolored. Tap a meaning to see all cards of that color from all lists, grouped into Todo, Progress and Done.

Uncolored cards have no color of their own yet and are shown in yellow. They typically come from the Reminders app or from Batch Entries…. Cards you create with New Card always get a color.

Edit the legend

Select a color under Workflow › Colors. The inspector shows:

• Name, Description and Keywords, comma-separated. Tap Save Meaning to keep your changes. Remove Meaning keeps the color but drops its meaning.
• Edit Color Legend… shows the whole legend: rename or remove meanings, give a favorite without meaning one (Add meaning for …), or go back to the suggestion with Restore Suggested Legend.

Assign colors automatically

iKanban can suggest colors for cards that have none yet:

1. Open a list’s menu (…) on the board and choose Assign Colors…. Or, in the inspector of a color, choose Assign Colors to Uncolored Cards… to cover all lists.
2. iKanban looks at the open cards (Todo and Progress) without a color and suggests a meaning for each. It uses the on-device Apple Intelligence model when it’s available; otherwise the suggestions come from the keywords of your legend and from cards you have already colored, and the sheet tells you so.
3. Check the suggestions. Switch off cards you want to leave alone, or pick another meaning from the menu next to a card.
4. Tap Apply to … cards. Undo Coloring removes the colors again.

Nothing changes before you tap Apply, and cards that already have a color are never touched. Cards without a fitting meaning stay uncolored.