Org mode is great. It is powerful, versatile and customizable. Unfortunately, I always found the task priorities functionality a bit underwhelming, not in terms of usability, but more in the visual department. Inspired by https://github.com/sabof/org-bullets, I created a minor mode that displays org priorities as custom strings. This mode does NOT change your files in any way, it only displays the priority part of a heading as your preferred string value. Set the org-fancy-priorities-list variable either with a list of strings in descending priority importance, or an alist that maps each priority character to a custom string. (setq org-fancy-priorities-list '("HIGH" "MID" "LOW" "OPTIONAL")) or (setq org-fancy-priorities-list '((?A . "❗") (?B . "⬆") (?C . "⬇") (?D . "☕") (?1 . "⚡") (?2 . "⮬") (?3 . "⮮") (?4 . "☕") (?I . "Important")))