Label Weight Customization

JonahMiller — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:11:46 GMT

Support more customization for label weights. Primary requests at this time:

Blocking/tiered weighting defined between specific label classes, not only universally (ie, layer A blocks labels from layer B, but not layer C)
Weights based on entire feature layers, in addition to specific label classes
- Also support weights for group layers
- (There is a workaround for this already, so it's just a Quality Of Life concept)

Example scenario

Goals for labeling:

No labels can overlap any POI
Street labels cannot overlap parcels
Building labels must be on buildings, but should not overrun them
Fire hydrants may overlap anything besides POI, but should prefer overlapping parcels/buildings over streets
POI may overlap anything, but should prefer overlapping streets/buildings over parcels

Given the current label weight configuration, not all of these goals can be achieved easily.

To prevent street labels overlapping parcels, parcel weight must be set to 1000 (blocking)
- If parcels are blocking, buildings cannot be labeled unless they are set to "never remove"
  - If buildings are set to "never remove," they may be forced to overrun their boundaries
For hydrants to prefer overlapping parcels/buildings before streets, streets must have a higher weight than parcels and buildings. For POIs to prefer overlapping streets/buildings before parcels, parcels must have a higher weight than streets and buildings.
- If parcels are already blocking, preferring to overlap streets is not possible
- We cannot have parcels weighted higher than streets and streets weighted higher than parcels - one must be universally preferred over the other
To prevent any labels overlapping POIs, the weight is set to 1000 (blocking)
- This only affects those with OWNER = "PUBLIC," due to the class definition on the sole label class
  - To block all POIs, you must create a second label class with no definition and no labeling

Proposed solution:

Set label weights/blocking criteria per layer, layer group, or group of label classes
Configuration for this example:
- All features
  - Blocked by all POI
- POI
  - Streets and buildings weight = 1
  - Parcels weight = 2
- Hydrants
  - Parcels and buildings weight = 1
  - Streets weight = 2

With this solution:

All POI block all labels
Streets cannot overlap parcels
Buildings can overlap parcels, but still respect their other restrictions (ie no overrun)
Hydrants can overlap streets, but prefer to avoid them
POIs can overlap parcels, but prefer to avoid them

idea Label Weight Customization in ArcGIS Pro Ideas