Autocomplete Breaks When Title Has Emoji

[laurents]

Hi there,

Steps to reproduce

• Create a few notes named:

[[Helloworld]]
[[Helloworld - Marketing]]
[[Helloworld - Something Useful]]
[[Helloworld - Resources]]
[[Helloworld - More Notes]]

• Type [[Hel

You’ll see Helloworld as the first result, which is what you’d expect.

• Now add an emoji to your note title:

[[🔥 Helloworld]]

• Type [[Hel or even [[Helloworld

The note with an emoji is always the latest.

Every time I type my project’s title, because I used emoji to differentiate my projects, I have to scroll down almost the entire list of results. It’s super annoying.

Expected result

The autocomplete result should be identical whether my note is titled [[The Name]] or [[🔥 The Name]].

I guess there is a special case if the user typed an emoji during autocomplete, but otherwise, Obsidian should ignore emojis when computing distances.

Actual result

Having an emoji in the title completely changes the autocomplete results, making it impractical.

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: v1.8.10
	Installer version: v1.8.4
	Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 23.6.0: Mon Jul 29 21:13:04 PDT 2024; root:xnu-10063.141.2~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6020 23.6.0
	Login status: logged in
	Language: en
	Catalyst license: none
	Insider build toggle: off
	Live preview: on
	Base theme: dark
	Community theme: Minimal v7.7.4
	Snippets enabled: 2
	Restricted mode: off
	Plugins installed: 10
	Plugins enabled: 7
		1: Templater v2.11.1
		2: Readwise Official v3.0.1
		3: Excalidraw v2.10.1
		4: Dataview v0.5.68
		5: Advanced Canvas v4.0.2
		6: Canvas Mindmap v1.0.2
		7: Canvas minimap v1.0.15

---

Additional information

None

[vanadium]

That is because how Obsidian prioritizes searches. It will prioritize notes that equal the string you type, then these that start with the string you type, then these that contain the string you type somewhere…

Rather than having emoji in your title, you could use the emoji in links in other notes where it is visually relevant, like

🔥 [[Helloworld]]

And of course, you could also explicitly add a first level title including the emoji at the top of the note.

Alternatively, start your search with the emoji - but definitely, this is not practical.

[CawlinTeffid]

Moved to Help because not a bug (but thanks for reporting and following the template).

Im not sure if it would get any traction, but you could file a feature request for the desired behavior.

[cheezopath]

I have been using emoji in titles and have noticed this difficult behaviour. Clearly not a bug, and I get that it’s niche but I would be interested in a setting that would alleviate this difficulty

[Jopp]

Since emojis are not letters on our keyboard, I honestly don’t see the point of this feature.
Same as @vanadium, if I want to highlight a topic then I’ll add an emoji before or after a relevant title or wiki-link, but then only.

[laurents]

Since emojis are not letters on our keyboard, I honestly don’t see the point of this feature.

This is precisely why Emoji should be ignored during autocomplete. They are visual cues.

And that still feels like a bug tbh, because I can’t imagine someone coming up with this feature, it’s a side effect of how search is implemented right now.

That is because how Obsidian prioritizes searches. It will prioritize notes that equal the string you type, then these that start with the string you type, then these that contain the string you type somewhere…

But that doesn’t mean that’s the proper behavior

I sync my notes, projects, and resources between Obsidian, Todoist, GDrive, etc. and Obsidian is the only tool making this difficult.

FWIW, using Emojis for identifying notes is so ubiquitous you’ll find it used online repeatedly in templates and examples, it’s even a native feature in Notion:

Notion:

Todoist:

(ref)

Even despite the poor support, searching for “Obsidian templates” gives examples of using emojis on notes.

[cheezopath]

the reason i use it is that emojis are short, colourful, and faster to visually parse than words.
I’ll use them to differentiate broad types of notes and this has sped up a lot of aspects for me – just not linking!

[laurents]

fwiw @cheezopath I bump’d this feature request if you want to chip in as well: An option to have quck switch ignore emojis - #2 by laurents