An idea for improvement that should be simple to implement:
Make the star in task lists red instead of yellow if the task has been starred because the due date has been reached. Not only will this make these tasks stand out more, it will also display clearly that this kind of star is different because it cannot be set/unset manually.
Thanks for you suggestion. This is indeed simple to implement, but to be honest, it seems a little bit arbitrary to treat the stars in due items in a special way. Don’t they already stand out enough given the large red Due Today label ?
It does not feel arbitrary to me because they are in fact different - you can’t click on them to remove them.
But you’re right that there is already the red “Due Today” or “x Days late” label. On the desktop in dark mode with many colored tags it does not stand out that much as in light mode, but yes, in principle that suffices. Showing two red items might look like a bit too much or duplicated. I also understand that we cannot simply remove the label in favor of the red star because it also shows the number of days overdue, and relying on color alone in an UI is not a good idea and may be a problem for color-blind people.