We shipped custom chore icons this week
The NestBoard team · 2026-07-07
Why icons, why now
We shipped custom chore icons this week. You can now add a little watering can to "Water the basil," a dog silhouette to "Feed Murphy," a trash bin to "Take out recycling."
The feature came from a pattern we kept seeing in support requests. Families would send screenshots of their chore list—ten or twelve text rows—and ask if there was a way to make specific tasks "stand out more." Not with color coding or priority flags, but with something you could recognize at a glance from across the kitchen.
One parent told us her seven-year-old could read fine, but when he walked past the tablet in a hurry, his eyes would just slide over the words. An icon gave him a hook. Another family mentioned their kids would argue about whose turn it was because they'd misread similar-looking task names. A small visual marker cut through that confusion.
What it looks like
The icon picker lives in the chore editor, same place you set the title and rotation. We started with about thirty icons: common household tasks, pets, plants, bins, tools. You can also leave it blank—plenty of chores don't need decoration.
The icons are simple line drawings in ink, sized to sit comfortably next to the task name without dominating it. They're not rewards or gamification. They're signposts.
The quality-of-life shift
This isn't a headline feature. It won't change how chore rotation or the leaderboard work. But it's the kind of thing that makes the interface feel like it's paying attention to how families actually move through their day.
You don't always have time to stop and read. Sometimes you're herding two kids out the door and you just need to see, in your peripheral vision, whether the blue recycling icon has a checkmark yet.
We've been testing it internally for two weeks. The number of times someone in the office has said "oh, that's so much better" is higher than we expected for such a small change.
If you're already using NestBoard, the icon picker is live in your chore settings. If you've been waiting for your chore list to feel a little more at-a-glance, this one's for you.