selection_badge

selection_badge lays every possible value of a field out as a horizontal row of pill buttons. The current value gets the active highlight; picking a different value is one click, with no dropdown to open. Core uses it where choices are few and switching is frequent: skill levels in recruitment, meeting privacy in calendar.

It accepts two field types, and treats them differently. On a selection, the pills are the declared values, straight from the field definition. On a many2one, the widget fetches options with name_search on the related model, honoring the field's domain, and here is the catch read straight from the source: it fetches with an empty search term and no explicit limit, meaning all matching records become pills.

Two more behaviors from the source complete the picture. Clicking the active pill on a non-required selection clears the value back to empty. And in readonly contexts the widget does not render pills at all, just the current value as plain text.

Dropdowns hide information; pills expose it. For the three-to-six option decisions your team makes hundreds of times a day, triage categories, priority buckets, skill levels, showing every option turns a two-click choose-and-scan into a single click. It also makes the option set self-documenting for new hires.

The clear-on-reclick behavior deserves a mention in your user onboarding: it is the fastest way to unset a value, and simultaneously the most common accidental data change with this widget. Required fields are immune, the source checks.

Know when to stop: pills consume horizontal space per option. Past roughly six options, or with long labels, the row wraps and the scan advantage dies; that is dropdown territory, or radio territory when vertical space is cheap.

Studio offers this widget for Selection fields under the name Badges.

1. Open the form in Studio and select the Selection field.

2. In the Properties tab, set Widget to Badges.

3. Click Close to leave Studio.

The same choice appears for Priority-type selection fields, where Badges is listed among the interchangeable widgets.

Studio stops at selection fields: the docs list only Badge and Radio as alternative many2one widgets, so putting pills on a many2one is an XML edit. The size option and the list variant's color_field are likewise set by hand in the view XML.

Selection as pills

<field name="level" widget="selection_badge"/>

Large pills for touch screens

<field name="level" widget="selection_badge"
       options="{'size': 'lg'}"/>

Many2one pills, domain limited

<field name="team_id" widget="selection_badge"
       domain="[('active', '=', True)]"/>

Every team matching the domain becomes a pill. Keep the domain tight; the fetch has no limit.

Colored badges in a list column

<field name="skill_level_id" widget="selection_badge"
       options="{'color_field': 'color'}"/>

In list views Odoo automatically picks the list.selection_badge variant, which reads the record's color integer for the badge color in readonly rows.

Readonly means text. The template's readonly branch renders the current value's label as a plain span, no pills, no colors (except the list variant's color_field case). Teams that chose pills for their looks are regularly surprised when the saved form shows plain text. If the goal is a colored state display, badge or label_selection is the right tool.

Many2one loads everything. The options come from a name_search with an empty term over the field's domain. Fifty records make fifty pills. There is no paging and no Search More; the widget is built for small referential models like skill levels or teams.

Clearing is a feature. onChange compares the clicked value with the current one; equal and not required means update to false. The same code path means clicking any pill writes through the standard record update, so dirty-state handling and onchanges behave exactly as with a dropdown.

The module also ships a sibling, selection_badge_with_filter, which takes an allowed_selection_field option and shows only the pills whose keys appear in another field's value, the badge cousin of dynamic_selection.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The changes below are read from the public development branch and are not final until release.

This widget is being replaced. The file registering selection_badge is gone from the development branch. In its place: badges_selection, selection-only, with a new badge_limit option that folds excess options into a More dropdown, plus icon support and keyboard navigation (arrow keys, space to select, backspace to clear); and a separate badges_many2one widget for many2one fields with related_icon_field and default_icon options. The 19.0 size and color_field options have no counterpart in the new files, and selection_badge_with_filter moves from web into hr_holidays. As read today, XML using widget="selection_badge" would fall back to the default selection widget after upgrade unless an alias is added before release; we re-verify when Odoo 20 ships.