# Labels

Labels are user-defined key-value pairs that you can attach to your resources to organize and categorize them however you make sense of them.

A label might describe ownership, a project, an environment grouping, or anything else that helps you find and group related resources. Nais does not assign any special meaning to your labels — they are yours to use as you see fit.

## How labels work on Nais

Labels on Nais are regular [Kubernetes labels](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/working-with-objects/labels/). You can use any key and value that follows the standard Kubernetes label syntax.

```text
<key>: <value>
```

When you set a label on a resource, Nais keeps it verbatim and propagates it to the underlying Kubernetes resources that the resource owns. For a [workload](/workloads.md), this means the label is also applied to the resources Nais generates on your behalf.

## Hidden labels

Nais surfaces all labels on your resources, except for a few that Nais and Kubernetes manage internally. The following labels are hidden in [Nais Console](/operate/console.md) and the [Nais API](/operate/console/api.md):

- the `app` label
- the `team` label
- any label whose key contains the substring `nais.io/`

These labels are still present on the underlying Kubernetes resources — they are only hidden from the Nais-managed views.

## Where you can use labels

You can define labels on any of the Kubernetes resources that Nais supports, under `metadata.labels`.

In addition, you can add and edit labels directly from [Nais Console](/operate/console.md) for:

- [Valkey](/persistence/valkey.md)
- [OpenSearch](/persistence/opensearch.md)
- [Config](/services/config.md)
- [Secret](/services/secrets.md)

## Related pages

🎯 [Add labels to your resources](/operate/how-to/labels.md)

📚 [Label reference](/operate/reference/labels.md)