Automatic card frontside formatting and coloring based on title and labels
Trello's Swiss Army Knife!
The Trello Cards Optimizer Chrome extension allows you to creater richer boards. Check it out on http://trellocards.com.
It supports automatic card frontside coloring and formatting based on labels and title markup, where you can use tags for a main title, subtitle, priority, starring and coloring.
TCO also supports markdown for tables in card backside description, and even in the comments, as well as code syntax highlighting.
And what about copy and paste formatted text from Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Google Mail. Documents and Spreadsheets or web snippets!
Combined with productivity features like removing of the Add New List column, clickable hyperlinks in titles, collapsing lists without cards and much more, it's an indispensable Trello enhancement.
TCO can be combined with scrum extensions like Plus For Trello etc (for which it has special support to wait after Plus has processed cards).
All features can be turned on and off in the Extension Options dialog.
Trello Cards Optimizer settings can be overruled per board.
==== Plus for Trello support ====
The extension is optimized to be combined with the Plus for Trello extension.
Cards for which a Plus for Trello timer is running can be highlighted, and the extension won't interfere with title Plus for Trello's title formatting.
You also have the option to hide the Plus for Trello estimate/spend comments.
==== Lists ====
• Collapsing empty lists:
If enabled, every empty list is collapsed vertically to remove empty space.
• Resize columns to fit screen width:
If enabled, the extension adjusts the list (and cards) width for optimum screen usage.
• Sort cards in list:
If enabled, cards in a list are sorted based on exclamation priority and importance of due date (overdue, today, soon, future and completed or no date), main title name and title.
Exclamation priority is ignored if due date is completed.
You can exclude one or more listnames for sorting.
• Group cards in list based on main title:
If you enable sorting, you can also group cards based on main title (|).
If there is more than 1 card with the same main title in a list, the cards will be grouped and placed at the sort position of the most important one.
Single cards with a main title are treated just like normal cards.
• Color the background of lists:
You can enter background colors or even full css styles per list name.
==== Card backside ====
• Width of back of card:
You can set the width of the back of the card in the options.
Leave out the width to use Trello's default.
• Text coloring in description and comments:
<c:red this is red text> creates red text. You can only use html color names.
• Table markdown in description and comments:
TCO also supports markdown support for tables in card backside description, and even in the comments!
To create a table, always start lines with a | (pipe) and include a header, a separator with column defitions with minimum three dashes per column, and a minimum of 1 row below the separator row (or 2 rows in case of a 2 columns table).
The total number of columns is set based upon the number of | --- | separator row.
You can control table width, column alignment, text wrap and column spanning, and you can use multiple lines in a table header or cell.
Table markdown is explained in Trello's Formatting Help, just click that button and scroll down!
• Copy/paste tables in description and comments:
If you have a table as text formatted with tabs (like you get when you copy rows from an Excel table) the table markdown is automatically formatted on paste!
• Tab support in description and comment editing:
You can use the tab key during editing, which will automatically insert 4 spaces.
The left and right arrow as well as backspace keys detect 4 spaces as a tab and jump over it.
You can also select a block of text and use the tab key to indent it or shift-tab to remove indentation.
• Syntax highlighting in ``` code blocks in description and comments:
You can tell TCO to use syntax highlighting for code blocks enclosed by ```.
To use it, specify the code language on the first line followed by a colon:, like this:
```
html:
... your code here ...
```
After the colon you can use the options 'linenumbers' and or 'wraptext'.
So to use syntax highlighting for sql with linenumbers and wrapped lines, use:
```
sql:linenumbers,wraptext
... your code here ...
```
The following language codes are available:
asp, c, c#, c++, css, cssless, html, htmlmixed, htmlphp, java, javascript, json, jsp, mariadb, mssql, mysql, objectivec, pearl, pgsql, php, plainhtml, plsql, python, ruby, sql, typescript, vb, xcss, xml.
Explanation of the syntax highlighting is just as with the table markdown included in Trello's Formatting Help, just click that button and scroll down!
==== Card frontsides =====
• Label background coloring:
If enabled, the background color of the card backside will automatically be set to a percentage of the first label color.
• Card numbers per board:
Trello's card numbers can be shown on the top-left of the cards.
• Separator cards:
You can define a small or large separator card by starting the title with > or >>.
• Coloring cards:
You can set the background color of the card by entering c:colorname or c:00FFAA (for example) in the title.
This overrules the label background coloring.
• Title markup:
***** Usage of markup tags in card title: *****
The following markup codes can be used in a card title:
"|" or "||" marks the end of a main title, which is shown in bold before or above the rest of the title
">" in the first part of the title creates a centered layout (used for seperators)
">>" in the first part of the title also creates a centered layout, but with bigger font-size.
"[between brackets]" marks a subtitle, which is shown underneath the title
"?" in the title creates a blue question icon before the title (color will be gray if card has a completed deadline)
"!", "!!" or "!!!" marks priorities, showing an alert icon and a colored border on the left of the card
" *4" (or other digits) marks a number of stars, displaying a star icon with the number next to it. The * must be preceeded with a space.
" #tagname" is considered to be a tag, printed italic and colored blue. The # must be preceeded with a space. (if Plus for Trello is installed, #tagname will be hidden!)
" c:pink" sets the background of the card to pink. You can also use c:#ff0000 or just c:ff0000. The c: must be preceeded with a space.
"*text*" creates italic text
"**text**" creates bold text
"~~text~~" creates striked out text
"`text`" creates code text
"<c:red this is red text>" creates red text. You can only use html color names.
"\n" creates a new line.
Latest reviews
- (2023-05-17) Martin Price: Doesn't work at all. Has been abandoned.
- (2022-12-04) Arq. Fabio Formighieri: É a melhor extensão mas, no momento, não está funcionando.
- (2022-10-05) Junior Colson: TCO seems to not be maintained anymore. It doesn't work since few weeks now. Really sad, it was great!
- (2022-09-27) Tobias Schürer: I switched to Pro4Trello (see related extensions). It's similar even though it has a slightly different set of enhancements.
- (2022-09-26) Orlando Perrone: The extension no longer functions, and it looks like the creator has abandoned the project.
- (2022-09-15) Rust Ince-Schroeder: This was a great tool, but stopped working. Website looks abandoned. Bummer
- (2022-09-14) Alexandre Ferreira: Stopped to work this past weekend ! Could you take a look on that? Thank you for your great work!
- (2022-09-09) Dávid Bíró Márk: Hi! I like this extension ;) Please look at, because now it's broken. I would like to use again, thank you!
- (2022-09-05) River: Awesome work! I just noticed that it stopped to work this past weekend. Could you take a look on that? Thank you for your great work!
- (2022-09-04) Alex S: Used to be good, but now is broken. I get the error "Refused to evaluate a string as JavaScript because 'unsafe-eval' is not an allowed source of script in the following Content Security Policy directive". It also fees a bit odd that the source is not publically available.
- (2021-12-13) Philippe BARRAUD: Very good !
- (2021-08-16) Leonardo Santos Costa: Unfortunately I had to uninstall because it freezes completely my browser when I try to use. I have a 4 year old board in Trello with more than 1k cards so I think TCO can't handle this much of cards, which is sad. I REALLY like this extension, but I couldn't use anymore because of this. Really hope it gets fixed;
- (2021-06-28) Radosław Bazak: freaking life-saver.
- (2021-06-25) 범영: This is a great chrome plugin for Trello. - High intuition by card color change - Wider card width - Table form enable - UI showing priority
- (2021-06-03) CComp Play: Fantastic!
- (2021-06-03) Emília Carmem Moraes Ferreira de Oliveira: Awesome!
- (2021-06-03) Great!
- (2021-06-03) River: Awesome work! I just noticed that the 'TCO board icon' disappeared. So I cannot open the configs of a specific board anymore. Could you take a look on that? Thank you for your great work! I will vote with my other accounts also!
- (2021-03-31) Josh Comninellis: I LOVE the capabilities. They are exactly what I've been looking for. But the extension bogs down my browser and freezes on all my devices, even my super powered desktop. I get the repeated message from Chrome "Page is not responding. Close? Wait?" When I wait the problem continues. Ultimately I had to turn it off just so I could start using my Trello board again. If it didn't shut my browser down, I would use it every single day. Am I missing something? Anyone else experiencing this? I would be HAPPY to update my rating if I can get someone to help me fix the problem. I'm reading other reviews that say it works great. I want it to work great. The capabilities are amazing. Any ideas? I am on Macs mostly, but I also use a Chromebook. Same problem.
- (2020-12-01) Jerome: FAN-TAS-TIK!!! I couldn't live without this add-on as well as I couldn't live without Trello. It is simply the best. Would gladly pay a 1-time fee for it if I had to.
- (2020-11-08) Carlos: This extension is amazing. Especially filtering by hashtag. Thank you! Just Donated! PS. Request: I use a bookmarklet to increase Trello list width. TCO resizes shrinks the width of the *cards* inside those lists often. Could you stop TCO from changing card widths when I uncheck "Resize lists to fit board width (if possible)"?
- (2020-10-29) Neil Cresswell: Not a fan of all of the defaults but you can easily disable things you don't want or adjust and this is a great replacement for my previous color label in lists option I was using, which stopped working recently.
- (2020-10-21) Daniel Wójcikowski: It looks perfect, however it doesnt work if you have to many cards. I work with +/- 100 cards continuosly and Trello couldnt load. Had to remove it.
- (2020-09-18) Daniel 360i: Everyone uses trello differently and i imagine many don't have boards with 2-4k cards. but for those who do, first glance of the app is a bunch of crashes untill i find the global options disable OTC and then enable board by board on the small ones. It's hard to fix, but i'd say either make a timeout if to much calculations are needed (with a popup) or disable automatically on a board if #cards > X and let the user know why it was done
- (2020-07-29) Keith Steger: Really appreciated the ability to widen a card. Got this extension particularly to add tables to cards. I've tried everything in the articles and instructions and even copied code snipets directly and *cannot* get the promised results. This part still needs work and/or better documentation. Much potential here though.
- (2020-07-15) Yui Lik Chan: Amazing UI!
- (2020-06-24) Sarin us: Very Userfull
- (2020-04-02) Samer Sultan: Add's a lot of customization and usefulness to Trello boards
- (2020-03-29) Squalle: I like this. I REALLY wanted to love it. But it seemed to make trello lag more. I love being able to color cards, but it's not worth it when I have to wait for it to load every time I open trello. I second the rating that mentioned the icon. An icon should be an image, not text. ;)
- (2020-02-24) AFT interaktiv: Cool, vereinfacht die Arbeit mit Trello, ist leicht zu bedienen. Ich mag es nicht mehr missen. Danke für das wirklich geniale Tool.
- (2020-02-04) Ocean Crow: I am so please I discovered this extension. Myself and my company use Trello extensively and it is rare that we find something it cannot do. However, the more you use Trello the more you wish that you could just change the cards to make them standout, group them, colour them, change the font size, bold text, colour text and so on. I discovered TCO by chance and through it have taken Trello to the next level and used it in presentations and seminars. As heavy users of Trello, we hit a bug with TCO and scrolling and on the off chance I contacted the developers at TCT. Through an exchange of messages myself and Wessel de Vries were able to get to the source of the problem and in the latest version it was fixed. All credit to Wessel and the TCO team. It means that my company can continue to be productive, continue using Trello effectively going forward. I recommend Trello Card Optimizer, it is well documented, always improving and should extend what you want to do with Trello.
- (2020-02-03) Ewen Wallace: I like it. I turned a few things off like sorting but I like the other stuff it does here. The copy-paste from Excel is a treat. I was after Syntax Highlighting but the other stuff in here is a nice bonus. I use a bastardised UserStyles dark CSS theme and it seems to work just fine with that. For tables the 2nd row looks like |: --- c:black |: --- c:black : | : --- c:black : for me which works fine in dark themes. Thanks! Well done.
- (2020-01-14) Christine Shaw: Great extension. I've noticed that when I'm in the card view, all the menu items on the right hand side have been shifted down beneath the activity section as opposed to starting at the top of the card. I'm not sure if it's a bug or if it's clashing with another extension. Please let me know if you're experiencing this as well.
- (2020-01-13) Richard Hoefer: to dev @Wessel de Vries : This is going to sound very trite, and so I apologize in advance. However, what if there are others who have a similar view? At least worth hearing it as feedback: I like the extension, but I'm very visual and have adhd as well, so this is about distractability: it's your icon's design: it's so visually annoying to me that I had to disable the extension. that giant T at the top is the offender. ... I am sure that any number of your many users would happily re-design it for you, for free. But I would imagine that as the developer, you like it the way it is. Thank you.
- (2020-01-10) Maryam Moghaddas: I like this extension, it does quite a lot. But My cards are in Persian, which is a RTL language. Trello itself shows my cards fine but this extension turns them to left-to-right. And that is why sadly, I have to uninstall it :(
- (2020-01-01) Ken Loh: It does the tricks where Trello could not.
- (2019-12-26) Karlo Verde: I found this extension quite useful. However, I feel that the sorting logic should be customizable. At the moment, it sort the cards according to their priority, their title and their due date (in that order it seems to be).
- (2019-11-26) K Mason Schecter: This extension replaced several extensions and userscripts, including one of my own. Fantastic usability improvements. I especially like the list resize and empty list collapse features. Donated 8 EUR, and posted a few suggested enhancements. Brilliant! Thanks!
- (2019-11-11) Diego Valladolid: I have been using this plugin for a while now. So far, everything was just great and smooth, but since some versions ago I have just notice that my experience is worse than ever. This plugin is - Making my boards to load quite slow and by fits and starts, It takes over 10 seconds to have all cards formatted (my boards do not have more than 40/50 cards). - Everytime I move a card between lists, the rest of the cards move upwards slowly seeing how they are formatted one by one. - I am forced to refresh the board ignoring the cache (Ctrl + F5) since many cards o even lists are missing. - Everytime I create a new list, something "bad" happens: such new lists is not really created, such new list is created but not visible (I see it after unchaed-refresh), some other lists are not visible... Summing up, this plugin needs a serious optimizacion. On the other hand, I also believe that this plugin wants to cover too many features that are, actually, loweing the overall performance. What about split the plugin?
- (2019-11-05) Dan Saso: Great work - Just donated $ to your cause
- (2019-11-04) Gary Patterson: One of my favorite Chrome extensions and a great addition to Trello!! I have recommended this extension to so many others. Thank you to the developer
- (2019-10-24) Duy Trương: Excellent! But I think you should mention how to change global setting right inside board setting menu. It took me a while to figure that out; other than that, best extension I have used so far! Thank you!
- (2019-10-22) Gregg Pearlman: Though I've used Trello for years, I've only recently started using it regularly. This app does everything it says it's going to do, and Wessel provides great customer service. If you use Trello at all, TCO can only make life easier.
- (2019-10-07) Lionel Chia: I'm really loving this! So many convenient formatting changes that makes it make easier to use Trello... One thing bothering me though is that cards appear to look "aged" after they've been left alone for a while. Is there a setting somewhere to disable this function?
- (2019-09-05) Reddazrael: An absolutely fantastic Trello addition that is a must-have for me.
- (2019-08-16) Szymon Filipczyk (A): Great!
- (2019-08-13) Jorge Pena: Incredible improvement to an already great Trello product. My only suggestion would be to allow customization of the color for list counters which is always showing up red. Thanks!
- (2019-07-22) Susan Hobbs: More than just colored cards! I originally found this extension because I wanted to color code my Trello cards. This extension does this beautifully and so much more. You can even use hex codes to create a truly unique look for your Trello boards. Trello Cards Optimizer is also great for formatting card titles. It's so easy to bold the titles making them "pop" off of the card. Need a subtitle on the front of your card? Or colored text in your title? No problem. The option to automatically collapse empty lists really helps to streamline the look of your boards. I discovered a glitch with one of the functions. I contacted the developer and it was fixed within hours. Great job! I really love that you can have select which TCO features you want for each Trello board on an individual basis.
- (2019-07-13) danny bollaert: Great idea!
- (2019-07-12) Daniel Sobral: Making Trello Great! Don't get me wrong, I like Trello alright, but the more you use it, the more you get annoyed with minor issues here and there. I've installed Trello Cards Optimizer to get markdown working on card titles, but going over its features I noticed many other things that bothered me before and are handled by TCO. Trello Cards Optimizer is _seamless_. You don't need to do anything for it to do it's magic. You *can* use features provided by it to enhance your Trello experience. People who do not have it installed won't be impacted by other people working on the same board that do use it -- you'll get the benefits, and Trello will work as usual for the others. I've see the other review complaining about bugs, but I haven't stumbled upon any bug. Everything works just as usual, just better.