Sacha Chua - tag - tweak https://sachachua.com/blog/tag/tweak/feed/index.xml Emacs, sketches, and life Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:20:27 GMT en-US daily 1 11ty Emacs tweaks: Export Org checkboxes using UTF-8 symbols https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/03/emacs-tweaks-export-org-checkboxes-using-utf-8-symbols/ Thu, 27 Mar 2014 12:00:32 GMT emacs org tips https://sachachua.com/blog/?p=27119 UPDATE 2014-03-28: Newer versions of org have the org-html-checkbox-type variable, which you can set to unicode. Use M-x customize-variable org-html-checkbox-type to see if you have it.

This snippet turns - [X] into ☑ and - [ ] into ☐.

(defun sacha/org-html-checkbox (checkbox)
  "Format CHECKBOX into HTML."
  (case checkbox (on "<span class=\"check\">&#x2611;</span>") ; checkbox (checked)
        (off "<span class=\"checkbox\">&#x2610;</span>")
        (trans "<code>[-]</code>")
        (t "")))
(defadvice org-html-checkbox (around sacha activate)
  (setq ad-return-value (sacha/org-html-checkbox (ad-get-arg 0))))

To find this code, I searched ox-html.el for [. Eventually I found org-html-checkbox, which is directly called by org-html-format-list-item instead of being a function variable that you can change. So that meant I needed to override the behaviour of org-html-checkbox through defadvice. You can see above how I wrap advice around org-html-checkbox and replace the return value with my own function. For more about advice, read the Emacs Lisp Intro manual.

To find the hex codes for the UTF-8 characters, I searched Google for UTF-8 checkbox and found BALLOT BOX WITH CHECK. I used the hex code so that I didn't have to worry about encoding issues. I tested it by updating one of my weekly reviews. Tada!

Inspired by Grant from Wisdom and Wonder.

You can view 7 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

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