Lists
Emoji, colour and cover photo
A list can carry an emoji, a colour, a cover photo and a background.
Why you'd care
This is not decoration for its own sake. In a Lists view with thirty entries, an emoji is the difference between reading and recognising, and recognition is roughly ten times faster.
Where to set it
All four live in one place: List settings.
Open the list, then open the list's actions from the ... menu in its header. List settings is the first item.
Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux
⌘⌥, opens it directly from inside the list, without the menu.
What you can set
| Part | Where it shows |
|---|---|
| Emoji | Next to the name, everywhere the list appears |
| Colour | The list's accent, including in the side menu and pickers |
| Cover photo | A banner at the top of the list |
| Background | The surface behind the things |
Going further
Emoji first, everything else optional. One emoji does most of the recognition work. Cover photos are prettier but you only see them once you are already in the list.
Colours group as well as decorate. Giving every work list the same colour makes the Lists view scannable without any tagging.
Backgrounds carry a text colour. A dark photo behind dark text is unreadable, so text colour is set alongside the background rather than being fixed.
Tips
- Pick emoji that are visually distinct rather than semantically perfect. Two similar-looking emoji defeat the point.
- Keep backgrounds quiet on lists you use daily, and save the striking ones for lists you visit occasionally.
If it's not working
I cannot find where to change it. It is not in the app's Settings. List appearance belongs to the list, so it lives in that list's own settings, behind the ... in its header.