color coding in Gantt and a built-in palette of harmonious colors
What would you like to change?
Color coding is one of the main tools for planning: on a timeline it is how you see at a glance what is urgent, what is blocked, what belongs to which client or stream of work, and what is already done. Right now every bar in the Gantt view is drawn in the same theme primary color (gantt-task-bar.tsx: bg-primary/12, border-primary/25), so with more than a handful of tasks the chart turns into one uniform block and stops helping with planning. Visual polish matters here too: a board you enjoy looking at is a board you keep up to date.
Everyone codes things differently (by priority, by client, by status, by type of work), so a single fixed scheme won't fit all. What would help:
- Color Gantt bars by a chosen field: a "Color by" selector in the Gantt view with none (current), status (column color), priority, project, or label.
- A built-in palette of ready-made, harmonious colors (say 16–24 hues, each with a light and dark variant that keeps good contrast in both themes) to pick from wherever a color is set: labels, columns, projects, priorities. Free hex input is fine as an extra, but a curated palette is what keeps a board readable and good-looking without design skills.
- An accent color setting (per workspace or per user), picked from the same palette, instead of only light / dark / system.
- As a low-cost first step: expose
data-status/data-priority/data-projecton the bar element, so self-hosters can style bars with custom CSS today.
Additional context
Self-hosted v2.30.1. Labels and columns already have colors (#1557, about customizing label colors, is related), so reusing them in the Gantt and drawing them from one shared palette would keep the whole app consistent.
Originally requested by @skyboj on 2026-10-03. Original GitHub request #1900.