How to change status colours in Jira Cloud

Jira gives every status one of three colours, based on its status category: grey for To do, blue for In progress and green for Done. So In review, Blocked and Waiting for customer usually all look the same blue.

What Jira lets you change

In a company-managed project, an admin can move a status to another category in the workflow editor. That changes its colour, but also how Jira reports it: a status in the Done category counts as finished in reports and sprints. Use it only when the category is genuinely right, not to get a colour.

There is no native way to give each status its own colour.

With Tintboard for Jira

1. Install Tintboard for Jira from the Atlassian Marketplace (free for up to 10 users).
2. Open Settings → Apps → Tintboard → Status colours, pick a status (your workflows' statuses are suggested) and a colour, for example red for Blocked and purple for In review.
3. Install the Tintboard browser extension, or let IT install it for everyone.

The status then shows in its own colour in the issue view, the backlog, the list view and search results, while keeping its category for reports. Text colour is set automatically so it stays readable. Get started.