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Adding Icons to Folders for Better Organization

Mir O.

Hi everyone,

I have a suggestion to improve folders: What if we could add icons or emojis to folders?

Folders are great for keeping pages from being blank and without valuable content. However, if each folder contains information and we want to make it more visual and different, why not add emojis or icons to differentiate between groups of pages, in addition to just renaming them?

That could make it easier to identify and organize content. Isn't that possible? What do you think? Looking forward to your thoughts!

Comments

Daniel Bagiński

Hey! It was my very first thought. Parent pages could have icons, which make it more organized. I wish to have more customization options for folders as well.

Ned Lindau

Wow, @Mir O_ I literally came to the community this morning to ask this very question . Here's what we're currently thinking, and I'd love everyone's feedback on which direction makes the most sense:

We want to add the ability for users to personalize / add emojis to folders, and we're trying to figure out the right design pattern. If we copy the same pattern that pages have today and add it to whiteboards, databases, and folders, then we run the risk of making it hard for users to figure out which content type something is without opening it first. In other words, here's what the content tree would look like if we had the same emoji pattern across content types:

Screenshot 2024-08-20 at 11.01.06 AM.png

Another idea we have for folders is to have the emoji appear within the folder itself, like this:

Screenshot 2024-08-20 at 11.06.13 AM.png

Curious for all of your thoughts as to which of the above would be preferable, or if you were thinking of a different pattern altogether. Thanks, as always, for your feedback!

Kelsey Easterbrooks

Just chiming in to say that I was just wishing for the ability to add an emoji the other day.

@Ned Lindau - From my perspective, the value of the emoji is that it's a different color/visual prompt. With the icon showing on the folder, it's still the same grey color which doesn't help with the immediate visual difference in the same way emojis do.

That being said, I like that folders have the folder icon and it would look bad to have an emoji + a folder so I understand why you would consider putting an icon inside the folder. I think it would still be an improvement if you went in that direction!

Mir O.

I was thinking something like this:
image (3).jpg

Or this one:

image (4).jpg

These are my very basic mock-ups :')
But I want to make our documentation more engaging to my team by using images. This approach can make the content more playful and help break the monotony that documentation sometimes brings.
But, I'm not sure if it's possible.

Mathew Utting

I was thinking that given that the existing folder icon changes when it's open vs when it's closed you could replace the existing > with the folder.

Screenshot 2025-02-07 100635.png

You would be missing the ability to see if the folder was empty (as you no longer have the ● to indicate this, but I think most people would expect a folder to contain something, so shouldn't expect many empty folders to exist.

Sara Beyer

I'd love to see this as well! I use emojis to help visually differentiate between content, and having them at the folder level would be amazing! Has anyone requested this officially to Atlassian?

Daniel Bagiński

Hey @Ned Lindau,

Do you have any plans for this change to happen?

Julian Doan

Not sure if it helps but a quick hack (for now) could be to rename the folder and add an icon before the folder name, using the shortcut to bring up the icon keyboard. On mac it's Ctrl + Command + Space.

Not as clean because folder icons are still there but it helps differentiate between pages.

Screenshot 2025-05-20 at 8.58.33 pm.png

James DiVito

@Julian Doan This is a great hack until emojis are formally supported. As a Windows user, I can confirm that these Unicode characters look good on both the Macs and PCs.

In Windows 10 and up, the comparable command is Windows key + Period (.).

Zaar Hai

That works but limits you to the standard emoji sets (contrary to native support which would have enabled any Confluence emoji, including custom ones, to be used)

Zaar Hai

I miss this feature too!

PATRICK BATEMAN BAILEY

jan 2026 and still missing this feature...

I'm using text symbols as a workaround

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