Other Future Consideration

John LaFoone

Jun 8, 2023

Create an easier way to search for emojis.

Explain the problem as you see it

I have a difficult time searching for the correct emoji to use in Tana. I had to use Notion to determine the correct name of the emoji I wanted to use so I could search for it and add it in Tana. More details below:

Example 1- I had to find the name of this emoji, surprised the first word was "bust."
Example 2- Same as example 1
Example 3- I searched light bulb and this emoji didn't populate, I had to research for "bulb"
Example 4- - I don't care who you are, this is a lightning bolt, but the actual name is "high_voltage_zap."
Example 5- I thought these were stars not sparkles

Why is this a problem for you?

I don't have time to memorize or look up the correct terminology for the emojis if I want to add a specific one.

I'm of the opinion most people identify emojis visually and associate it to a specific word in their mind. The pain point is, the specific word in each persons' mind for the same emoji is not the same.

Suggest a solution

Expand the search capabilities when trying to find a specific emoji
Example #4 above is a good example- That is a lightning bolt my friends, allow me to type in lighting bolt to find this emoji

Re-work the UI as a menu with categories (this is a standard in many apps)

Example screenshot below (please forgive the odd colors, I'm using Arc Browser Boosts)

⁨5⁩ ⁨comments⁩

⁨5⁩ ⁨Comments⁩

Winston

Jun 8, 2023

Do you use Windows? You can hit the Windows key + "period" button to open the native emoticon panel. You can do a search on it

Erlend H Staff

Jun 8, 2023

Do you use macOS? You can hit ＾⌘ Space to open the native emoji picker that has built-in search.

John LaFoone

Jun 8, 2023

In reply to Erlend H

This is helpful! Thank you.

Rudolf Nanne

Jul 30, 2023

In Chrome OS it's Search+Shift+Space, however in Tana that's currently not working.

Screenshot 2023-07-30 09.29.02.png
Screenshot 2023-07-30 09.29.11.png

James Polley

Oct 19, 2024

Looking in the source shows that the library Tana is using for the emojis has a really nice list of synonyms for each emoji. The total set is a whopping 750Kb in size, and it's quite comprehensive with a really nice list of alternative names for each symbol

{
        emoji: "👤",
        description: "bust in silhouette",
        version: "0.6",
        keywords: ["bust", "bust in silhouette", "silhouette"],
        category: "person-people",
        group: "people-body",
        subgroup: "person-symbol"
    }

{
        emoji: "💡",
        description: "light bulb",
        version: "0.6",
        keywords: ["bulb", "comic", "electric", "idea", "light"],
        category: "objects",
        group: "objects",
        subgroup: "light-video"
    }

The one that I trip over most often is the play button:

{
        emoji: "▶️",
        description: "play button",
        version: "0.6",
        keywords: ["arrow", "play", "play button", "right", "triangle"],
        category: "symbols",
        group: "symbols",
        subgroup: "av-symbol"
    }

Unfortunately, Tana discards all of those useful labels and builds its own very strange list with just one single name for each emoji. is only permitted to be called arrow_forward, must be called the black_square_for_stop even though it's a white square with a blue border (for me, at least). is man-facepalming, is woman-facepalming, but is face_palm

As others have said, this isn't a huge issue as there are plenty of other ways to get emoji pickers, depending on your OS, but I'd love for it to be improved.

After the mobile app though. It can wait until after the mobile app. Please let it wait until after the mobile app.