I don’t normally use tags in Org-mode files, so I hadn’t noticed that tags on DONE headings use the same face as the heading itself. This makes the tags difficult to spot. Every theme I tested failed to differentiate between heading text and tags on DONE headings.

Here’s my books.org file:

Notice the indistinguishable tags in the list of DONE books

Notice the indistinguishable tags in the list of DONE books

After failing to find an easy way of changing the face of tags, I cheated and installed org-rainbow-tags. Now my tags are wildly different from the headings. And from each other, for that matter:

Vivid tags!

Vivid tags!

I’m not sure I like this for every org-mode file, however, so I only enable the mode in my books file. This is done by setting a local variable in the file itself, like so:

;; Local Variables:
;; eval: (org-rainbow-tags-mode)
;; End: