Icons with text fields

[benjaminjonard]

I’ve noticed that some people use Koillection to manage things like card collections. These often rely on icons (for types, extensions, etc.). I think it could be useful to support custom icons in Koillection.

I don’t plan to implement this right away, but I wanted to share some initial thoughts here and get feedback.

From a technical standpoint, this shouldn’t be too difficult to implement. My main concern is avoiding unnecessary clutter in the UI.

Since these icons would be reused frequently, it wouldn’t make sense to re-upload them each time. Instead, there could be a custom icon library, where users can upload icons once and then select them from the library when needed.

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Possible approaches

1. New field type: Icon + Text

Users could pick an icon from the library and enter associated text.

Pros:

• Straightforward to implement
• Behaves like any other field

Cons:

• Limited customization (icon would always appear next to the text, left or right)
• Icons would only be available for this field type (not in lists, for example)

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2. Custom syntax (similar to emoji in Twitch, Discord, GitHub, etc.)

For example: :my_custom_icon: would be replaced with the corresponding icon.

Pros:

• Works in any text field
• Icons can be placed anywhere in the text

Cons:

• Could impact search and sorting features

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What do you think? Would this be useful for your collections? Any other ideas or use cases I might be missing?