Question: How to Create a Custom Status Pack Using Emoji Icons

[JSG-1]

Question: How to Create a Custom Status Pack Using Emoji Icons

Hi, and thank you for your amazing work on Tasks — it’s central to my workflow.

I’m trying to create a custom Status Collection that uses my own icons (emoji) for each status (e.g., Culture 🌀, Strategy ♞, CoS 📝, ZKSB 📘, etc.). I want them to behave exactly like the built-in packs (Minimal, ITS, Ebullientworks), but with my own icon set.

I’ve run into some issues and would love guidance on the correct / supported way to do this.

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What I’m Trying to Achieve

• Define custom statuses (Culture, Strategy, FTxS, CoS, etc.)

• Have them fully recognized by the Tasks parser:

  • appear in queries
  • toggle correctly
  • sort/group by status

• Display emoji icons for these statuses in both:

  • Live Preview / Reading View
  • Tasks query output

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What I’ve Tried

1. Emoji as symbol values in data.json

{ "symbol": "🌀", "name": "Culture", ... }

• Emoji appear correctly in the status picker.
• But when used in markdown (- [🌀] Task), the task is not recognized in queries (it becomes a normal bullet).
• It appears multi-codepoint emoji are not accepted as valid status symbols.

2. ASCII symbols + CSS icon replacement

Using simple symbols internally (~, I, !, etc.) and replacing them visually with emoji via CSS (::after on .tasks-status).

• This partially works, but is unreliable with themes (e.g., Minimal’s checklist icons).
• Query output doesn’t consistently show the emoji styling.

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My Questions

1. What are the official constraints for symbol?

• Must it be a single Unicode code point?
• Are emoji supported?
• If not, is ASCII-only the intended pattern?

2. What is the recommended way to get custom icons?

• Should we always use simple symbols in data.json and rely on CSS to map them to icons?
• If so, is there a preferred selector or method to ensure this works consistently across themes?

3. How can users define their own “Status Collection”?

Similar to:

• “Minimal Theme: Add 22 supported statuses”
• “Ebullientworks Theme: Add 8 supported statuses”

Is there a supported way to create a custom pack that appears in this list?

If not, is hand-editing data.json + CSS the intended path?

4. Theme interactions

Are there known interactions with themes like Minimal, which override checkbox icons?
Is there a recommended way to disable or bypass theme-level checklist styling for Tasks?

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Summary

I’d like to create a clean, supported, stable custom Status Collection using emoji icons — ideally following the same pattern used by the built-in packs.

Could you share:

• the recommended approach
• any constraints around symbol values
• and/or a minimal working example of a custom status pack + icon mapping?

Happy to contribute back to documentation once I understand the best path forward.

Thanks again for your outstanding work on this plugin!

[claremacrae]

Hi, thanks for using Tasks.

I’ve run into some issues and would love guidance on the correct / supported way to do this.

There is no correct or supported way to do this.

Sorry, whilst I would like to help, this is way too many different questions to be able to be answered in a feasible amount of time.

I presume you have seen the docs linked from here:

• https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Getting+Started/Statuses

Non-obvious things that you may wish to consider:

• The Snippetor plugin for creating your own styles for checkboxes
• Having multiple Obsidian Configuration folders to enable you to switch between settings
• Asking for help in the Obsidian Discord's #appearance channel

[JSG-1]

Hi Clare,

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond — I really appreciate it. Your clarity helped me reset expectations and understand the boundaries of what’s currently supported in Tasks. I also appreciate the pointers to the docs, Snippetor, and configuration-folder options; those give me a solid path forward without adding more complexity to your plate.

Thanks again for your work on this plugin — it’s become an essential part of my daily workflow, and I’m grateful for the thoughtfulness you bring to it.

Wishing you a great rest of your week!

[claremacrae]

Excellent.

If you do find info that you feel is generally useful and worth adding to the Tasks docs, then suggested text would be most welcome.