Labels

Labels (Ctrl+8) lists the repository’s labels with their descriptions and colours. The details panel adds whether a label is one of GitHub’s defaults, and its address.

These keys work from the details panel as well as the list, so you can read what a label is and act on it without moving back. The context menu and the Actions menu have the same three. On a Mac keyboard, which has no Insert key, use Cmd+I; Cmd+D deletes.

Browsing by label

Enter on a label shows Issues & PRs restricted to that label. The window title and the status bar name it, for example “owner/name — 4 issues, 1 PRs (open) labelled ‘bug’”. Everything in Issues & PRs still works there, including the state filter, sorting, columns, and closing, reopening and commenting.

The restriction is applied by GitHub, not by the quick filter, so it finds every item with the label, not only those that happened to be in the list. Backspace returns to the labels. Ctrl+1 drops the restriction and shows all issues and pull requests again.

Creating and deleting labels

The New Label dialog has three fields: Name, which is required; Description; and Colour, six hexadecimal digits such as d73a4a. Leave the colour blank and GitHub picks one. If the colour is not six hex digits, GHManage says so and puts you back in the field before anything is sent.

Deleting a label removes it from every issue and pull request that carries it, and GitHub has no undo for that, so GHManage asks first and the question says so. The Delete item on the Actions menu reads Delete Label… in this view, so you know what it would delete.

After either change the labels list reloads, so you can see the result.

On a fork, labels come from the upstream repository, the same one the issues come from.