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Thought Icons

Overview

A thought can carry a custom icon, and once set, that icon shows up everywhere the thought appears — in the Plex, in search results, in lists, and on links. Icons make a brain far easier to scan: a recognizable picture catches the eye faster than text. You can choose from a large library of stock icons (including emoji and flags), or supply your own image, such as a logo or a photo.

How to Set an Icon

  1. Open the thought, click its name to show the properties header's controls, then click the Icon button.
  2. Choose from the icon menu:
    • Select Stock Icon — Open the stock icon library. The default shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+I (⌥⌘I on Mac).
    • Upload Icon — Pick an image file from your device (PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF, or WEBP).
    • Paste Thought Icon — Use an image you've copied to the clipboard (desktop app only).

The Stock Icon Library

The Select Stock Icon dialog lets you Browse by category or Search by keyword. It offers:

The Select Stock Icon dialog: Browse with its categories on the left and Business & Finance chosen, a grid of business icons on the right, and Search, Suggestions, Random and Recent below the categories

Click any icon to assign it. In the desktop app you can also add your own by placing SVG or PNG files into TheBrain's Custom Icons folder (subfolders supported). To open that folder, hold Shift (⌥ on Mac) in the Icon menu and choose Add Stock Icons....

Copying, Pasting, and Viewing

Removing an Icon

To clear a thought's icon, open the Icon menu and choose Delete Icon. This removes an icon that was set on the thought itself. Afterwards the thought shows its type's icon if its type has one, or else an automatic icon from its attachments (see Automatic Icons below), or no icon at all.

Automatic Icons

A thought that has attachments but no icon of its own gets an icon automatically from them, which is why a thought can have an icon you never set. Notes don't count as attachments here.

If the thought has a type that has an icon, the type's icon is shown in place of these automatic icons. An icon you set on the thought with the Icon button takes the place of both.

To get rid of an automatic icon, set your own icon, give the thought a type that has an icon, or remove the attachment the icon comes from. Delete Icon does not remove an automatic icon.

Hero Images

When a thought's icon is a large picture, TheBrain shows it as a wide banner across the top of the content area — a hero image — with the thought's name and label drawn over it, in place of the small icon beside the name. The picture can be an icon you set, an image attachment that TheBrain is using as the icon automatically, or an icon the thought inherits from its type. Small images stay ordinary icons, and website icons and SVG icons are never shown as a banner.

A brain window with Holiday Key Art active. Its only attachment is a picture of snowy mountains over a pine forest, which TheBrain uses as its icon: the Plex shows it small beside the thought's name, and the content area shows it as a banner across the top, labeled Hero image, with the name Holiday Key Art and the label Holiday 2026 campaign drawn over it

To turn the banner off, open Settings > Brain > Content Settings, choose the Attachments tab, and clear Show hero images on thoughts. The option is on by default. It is saved with the brain, so in a shared brain it applies to everyone who uses it. The banner is not used in the Thought Properties dialog. See Brain Content Settings.

Using an Attachment as an Icon

On the desktop app, you can set an attachment as the thought's icon with Set as Thought Icon from the attachment's menu. See Managing Attachments.

Types pass their icon down to their children — setting an icon on a type styles everything of that type at once. See Thought Types.

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