Can I select the colors used for colored tags, or are the 9 default colors fixed for eternity?

Joseph Kellner
I use colored tags to visually organize citations and it's a good system, but Zotero's default colors are the strangest choices - two greens, two blues, two purples, but no red or yellow? It's such a strange pallet, to the point where it's less useful than it could be. But I see no way to change them; please advise! I am using the Mac client.
  • Joseph Kellner
    I will add - in the documentation for colored tags, there *is* a screenshot example with, apparently, a yellow tag, so perhaps it was possible before, and perhaps it still is. Yellow is not an option for me it seems.
  • bwiernik
    The colors aren’t currently customizable. The previous color palette wasn’t colorblind-accessible.
  • Joseph Kellner
    Huh, strange. Well, if you're in any position of authority, I suggest introducing more colors - I've not seen this particular solution to that problem in other apps, and trying to distinguish between two close greens, purples and blues makes this feature fairly low-functioning, as somebody who tends to organize by color. Thank you!
  • DWL-SDCA
    The current tag color options were chosen after lengthy discussion and effort so that the "color" differences may be discerned by people who experience color blindness.
  • LiborA
    9 is a relatively small number, is it possible to add more colors?
  • AlessioPao
    I just sychronised Zotero after a while and part of my colors were erased. I have now to use the new palette, but it is quite difficult for me to change my habits and distinguish the two blue or green colors.

    I know that blind color affected are not confortable with the old palette, but the most part of people using Zotero are not touched by this illness and could change the colors without any problem. Therefore I think it would a good idea if the users were able to change them or use the old palette, if they feel better with an other configuration.
  • djipco
    Making the colours editable in the advanced configuration editor would make quite a few people happy, I think.
  • milacsantana
    I understand the reasoning behind having color-blind accessible colors, but like the commenters above, I would appreciate some level of customization or even having more than 9 colors to choose from (even if you can still only have 9 tags with shortcuts). Thanks!
  • constancappcarvalho
    I second this request. I understand and fully support the decision to have colors that are distinguishable to color-blind people. But I also think that this feature would be more useful for everybody (color-blind and non-color-blind alike) if we were given more options to choose from, either a fully customizable palette (with a color-picker) or, if that's technically impossible, a palette with more than 9 colors (regardless of the number of shortcut-assigned tags, which could remain at 9)
  • les.harrison
    I will add to this request with the following note -- while making sure the tags are accessible to the color-blind is a great goal, the current colors are not that accessible to those with weak vision. That is, the colors appear fairly close to one another. I'd love to be able to access a color menu similar to that in my PDF editor (PDF Expert) so that I can make the colors brighter and more distinct (I only use five: Have, Need, Done, Revisit, DeadEnd).

    Is there a setting or function name available that one could address in a plugin?
  • john_f
    To add to this from the perspective of a colorblind person - The ability to select custom colors would be incredibly helpful.

    I appreciate the efforts at making Zotero more accessible, but I'm still having a great deal of trouble with the color palette as presented in version 5.0.96.2 for Mac. This may be due to whatever my particular type of colorblindness is though. I was just about to make a different ticket for the issue when I came across this thread. Also, Joseph mentioned that there are no reds but two of my tags are displaying as R:137 G:28 B:9 and R:152 G:85 B:124 ... is that normal?
  • MikkoHaavisto
    edited April 6, 2022
    I am red-green color blind and the current color choices are bad from that perspective. Easy solution for everyone is to select own colors.

    Color tags which show up before the item and quick number assigning has huge potential and it is a shame it is so limited by the color options.

    Bright yellow would be a good option for almost everyone. Another one is more variation in brightness: dark and light colors are easily discerned by color blind people.
  • salnw
    Please allow us to choose to change the colours, and to assign colours to more than nine tags. Another case for changing colours is that some people use plugins or css to change the theme of Zotero and the current colours don't necessarily work best with that.
  • abejoseph78
    edited September 30, 2022
    You can copy paste emoticons as tag names and then assign a colour so that you can apply the tag when needed.

    Might be helpful as the symbol may more useful than a colour for some.
  • maiermik
    Please implement unlimited color picking for tags and PDF annotation, just like in Microsoft Word and many PDF annotation programs (color wheel, color slider, color palette).
  • atknapp
    +1 on being able to select colours with a standard palette/dropper option
    +1 to being able to set user-defined labels for each colour (e.g. Yellow = Key Point, Green = Thesis, or whatever)
  • alflamingo
    edited March 18, 2023
    About labelling annotation colors, I just wrote a template that you should be able to re-use. For as long as the color mapping remains the same (annotations side, not tags) it should work.See it on this thread.
  • lmviana
    +1
  • mryskiewicz
    Very valid. Enabling the option to add more coloured tags and customized colors would be an advantage.
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