[solved by auto-suggest] Alternate emoji insertion methods

[AnnaKornfeldSimpson]

After spending a couple of hours with several different Obsidian emoji-related community plugins, I discovered the GitHub shortcode names for the various emoji I use with Tasks. :date: (not calendar!) matches 📅 the due date icon, :hourglass_flowing_sand: matches ⏳ for scheduled dates, :flight_departure: 🛫 for start dates, :repeat: 🔁 for recurrence, :arrow_double_up: ⏫ , :arrow_up_small: 🔼 , :arrow_down_small: 🔽 for priorities, and white_check_mark ✅ for done dates. Are these documented somewhere that I missed? If not, could they please be?

Are there other ways to enter these emoji in Obsidian besides the Add or edit task modal, copy-pasting the images, or community plugins for shortcodes/emoji-insertion?
My search of the GitHub emoji API gave Unicode codes for each one (e.g. 1f4c5 for 📅); does anyone have a notion of how those can be used in Obsidian? (I'm on Windows, with an en-US keyboard, if either of those matter for Unicode-specific advice).

Thanks for a great plugin and being a great example of managing an open-source project!

[claremacrae]

Hello @AnnaKornfeldSimpson,

Many thanks for your message. This sounds really interesting.

Shortcode names for emoji

📅 (not calendar!) matches 📅 the due date icon

I think I may be misunderstanding something.... I tried typing :date: in to an Obsidian note, and it did not get converted in to 📅 ...

Is there any chance you could record a short demo to show how you are using :date: and similar, please? This might help to demonstrate what you are suggesting should be documented?

Are these documented somewhere that I missed? If not, could they please be?

Not in the docs for the Tasks plugin, no.

---

Later: oh, are you talking about the Emoji Shortcodes plugin?

I see that it changes how the codes are previewed, but does not change the actual text stored in the task, which means it would not be effective for the Tasks plugin, which specifically looks for the 📅 and similar characters...

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Or maybe this: https://github.com/aidenlx/obsidian-icon-shortcodes

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I'm going to stop guessing, and look forward to your reply! 😄

Other ways to enter emoji

Are there other ways to enter these emoji in Obsidian besides the Add or edit task modal, copy-pasting the images, or community plugins for shortcodes/emoji-insertion?

Here are a few that I am aware of.

1 OS-specific macro tools

Some people use operating-system-specific tools for generating the characters.

For example, on Mac I use the Alfred tool to expand these strings to these symbols:

• tkdue 📅
• tksched ⏳
• tkstart 🛫
• thigh ⏫
• tkmed 🔼

I'm on Windows, with an en-US keyboard, if either of those matter for Unicode-specific advice

On Windows I would use AutoHotKey to expand those symbols

2 Obsidian macro tools

A disadvantage of Alfred and similar is that if you use your vault on several different platforms, you have to set the short cuts up on each platform.

Perhaps https://github.com/ArianaKhit/text-snippets-obsidian might help by allowing snippets to be set up consistently across all platforms you run your Obsidian vault on...

I have not tested that one recently. I think there are others too.

3 QuickAdd

Lately I've started using QuickAdd to prompt me for the data I want to put in new tasks, and then to generate the text.

This is documented here:
https://obsidian-tasks-group.github.io/obsidian-tasks/advanced/quickadd/

Although I feel that this documentation could be improved with some more detail on the mechanics in QuickAdd, including making it generate a Command, and then adding a hotkey to the comment.

[edited to add:]

4 Unicode

My search of the GitHub emoji API gave Unicode codes for each one (e.g. 1f4c5 for 📅); does anyone have a notion of how those can be used in Obsidian? (I'm on Windows, with an en-US keyboard, if either of those matter for Unicode-specific advice).

Maybe this helps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#In_Microsoft_Windows

[AnnaKornfeldSimpson]

@claremacrae Thanks so much for your comments, and for reading my mind where I wasn't clear!

0. Yes I was trying out both the shortcode plugins you linked. Theoretically they would be auto-replacing the shortcode with actual emoji. I could get this to work with the "Suggester" setting turned on in the Emoji Shortcodes plugin. If I used the suggester to input one of the emoji such as ⏳, then typed the date, I could later edit the line via the Create or edit task modal and the fields in the modal would be filled correctly! Super nifty! But other-wise you are correct, without that specific suggester setting I couldn't get either shortcode plugin to replace the shortcode with the emoji in the source text, so it was not working with Tasks.
1. (and 2. 4.) Wow, complicated! I am not familiar with macro tools but that definitely seems like the way to go on Windows. This leaves me unsure how to scope my documentation request, but I am imagining another page under Advanced with Potential alternative ways to enter emoji that link to (but don't take responsibility for documenting) the shortcode plugin with "Suggester", these OS macros/macro plugin options (which could also include Templater user scripts: I have some existing ones that just input a couple characters where I am typing), and a link to the already existing quickadd page. As a user, I would be satisfied with curated suggestions of places to start, even though they are not supported by Tasks and I would have to go to the Obsidian forums or q&a platform for the specific tool if I needed help with them.
2. edit: here for Markdown formatting. see 1
3. Yes, I also have a QuickAdd command for creating new tasks, and I really appreciated the documentation for that! Specifically, the priority input on that documentation page was one if not the only example I could find of how to do suggestion input syntax in QuickAdd, and the hint about repeating dates via variables is great as well.
   The use-case that inspired this thread comes when I want to add new information (such as a scheduled date) to an existing task. Normally, it'd be a lot faster to type the ~10 characters than to have to pull up the edit modal - and it'd be easier to keep my focus on the task I'm on - but I was finding myself slowed down by the emoji insertion. Thanks to your answer above, I now have some additional ideas to try!

[AnnaKornfeldSimpson]

Specifically regarding improving the documentation on Quickadd, near the bottom there is a list of instructions that includes setting a command (though maybe that line could be improved with an image of the "flash"/"lightning-bolt" emoji?). You could add a:

4. Assign a Hotkey to your new command through the standard Settings -> Hotkeys interface (your new command will appear as `QuickAdd: "name you gave your capture"`).

[claremacrae]

That's a great idea. Thank you.

[claremacrae]

I think the right answer for this now is that there is a new Intelligent Auto-Suggest feature so probably no further action is required???