// ABOUT ME Site: https://nicolevanderhoeven.com Mastodon: https://pkm.so..." --- Obsidian Properties in YAML Frontmatter  ## Metadata - Author: [[Nicole van der Hoeven]] - Full Title: Obsidian Properties in YAML Frontmatter - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #obsidian - #yaml - #frontmatter Author: [YouTube Creator] Source: YouTube Video — "Obsidian properties in YAML frontmatter (v1.4 - OUT NOW!)" Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8 date created: 2025-08-25 17:45 --- # Title: Obsidian Properties in YAML Frontmatter (v1.4 Release) ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) --- ## 📝 Summary: Obsidian v1.4 introduces a **new UI for YAML front matter** and a **core plugin for properties**. The update resolves issues around broken YAML syntax, inconsistent metadata, and unclickable links. It enforces property types, supports multiple property formats (list, number, checkbox, date, time), and provides real-time syncing between UI and source mode. This release strengthens metadata consistency and improves workflows, though it requires plugin updates and adaptation to new conventions. --- ## 📖 Main Content: The update solves three long-standing problems: 1. YAML syntax errors often went unnoticed. 2. Renamed note links broke metadata references. 3. Inconsistent metadata naming grew unmanageable. Obsidian v1.4 addresses these by: - Adding a **new properties UI** for easier management. - Supporting property types with validation (list, number, boolean, date/time). - Making links and URLs **clickable** in metadata. - Adding a **properties pane** for global vault consistency. - Enforcing stricter parsing → reducing broken workflows. However, some plugins (Fantasy Calendar, Banners) don’t yet work smoothly with the new UI, and templates can break if property types are changed. Despite these challenges, the update increases long-term stability and integrates tightly with **Dataview**. --- ### 🗒️ Notes - [00:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&t=3) Problems with YAML: syntax errors, broken links, inconsistent metadata. - [02:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&t=174) New property types: text, list, number, checkbox, date, time. - [05:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&t=344) Links/URLs in front matter are clickable. - [08:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&t=519) New properties pane in core plugin → real-time updates. - [11:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&t=690) Learning curve: switching modes, hotkeys for Source mode. - [14:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&t=859) Plugin incompatibilities (templates, fantasy calendar, banners). - [19:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&t=1194) Consistency + auto-suggest reduces metadata sprawl. --- ## 📖 References: - Obsidian Docs: [help.obsidian.md](https://help.obsidian.md) - YAML.org: [Official YAML Spec](https://yaml.org/) - Dataview Plugin: [Docs](https://blacksmithgu.github.io/obsidian-dataview/) --- ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. *Original*: “Links in YAML front matter used to break when renaming notes.” *Paraphrase*: Before v1.4, if you renamed a note, any YAML metadata link to it would break, making references unreliable. 2. *Original*: “Obsidian now enforces property types for consistency.” *Paraphrase*: The new update requires properties to follow defined types (e.g., number, list), ensuring that metadata stays structured and standardized. --- ## 📰 Newsletter: 🆕 **Obsidian 1.4: Properties Made Simple** This week’s hot update in Obsidian is all about **properties in YAML front matter**. The new **UI for metadata** means no more broken YAML blocks, messy inconsistencies, or dead links. You can now add property types like checkboxes, lists, or dates, and links in metadata are finally **clickable**. Highlights: - Cleaner property management with real-time updates. - Auto-suggest for metadata to prevent duplicates. - New core plugin "Properties" adds a dedicated pane for vault-wide consistency. - Still works beautifully with **Dataview**. ⚠️ Heads up: some plugins (Fantasy Calendar, Banners) aren’t fully ready. This update is more than cosmetic — it’s a **workflow stabilizer**. Perfect time to revisit your YAML! 👉 Watch the walkthrough: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8) --- ## ✅ Action Items: - Adapt Obsidian’s **properties enforcement** as a model for WordPress contributor metadata consistency. - Teach YAML property types (list, number, date) as a best practice in onboarding workshops. - Use Obsidian’s UI model as inspiration for **open-source governance dashboards**. - Highlight plugin compatibility issues → parallels to WordPress plugin ecosystem health. --- ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - H1: Property type enforcement reduces metadata errors by 60%. - H2: Clickable links in front matter increase note-linking adoption. - H3: Auto-suggest metadata reduces duplicate tags/aliases in large vaults. ### 📊 Methodology: - Compare pre- and post-v1.4 error logs in YAML parsing. - Survey user adoption of clickable links. - Analyze vault metadata before/after auto-suggest. ### ❓ Questions: - Should WordPress adopt similar property-type enforcement for plugin metadata? - Can UI-driven metadata reduce contributor onboarding complexity? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Extending property UI to nested structures. - Investigating impact on plugin ecosystem stability. ### 💡 Implications: - Better governance models in PKM and open source. - Lower cognitive load for new contributors. - Metadata standardization → smoother integrations. --- ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual**: Strong (UI demo, icons). Could add flowcharts. - **Aural**: Weak (no audio summary). Suggest podcast tie-in. - **Verbal**: Strong, descriptive. - **Kinesthetic**: Medium (demo, but no exercises). Suggest YAML challenges. - **Logical**: Strong (property types, validation). - **Social**: Weak. Add community forum prompts. - **Solitary**: Moderate (self-experiments possible). - **Naturalistic**: None. Could analogize vault consistency to ecosystems. --- ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - Screen-reader issues with icons (needs alt-text). - Properties pane should support keyboard-only navigation. - UI contrast must be tested with dark/light themes. - Ensure responsive scaling for metadata fields. --- ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - Inclusive language, but technical jargon heavy. - Needs simplified definitions for neurodiverse users. - Could include global use cases beyond tech-savvy audiences. - Add representation by showcasing different PKM workflows (academic, nonprofit). --- ## ✅ Logical Validity: - **Strengths**: - Causal reasoning: enforced property types → fewer errors. - Deductive logic: clickable links solve renaming issue. - **Weaknesses**: - Slight overgeneralization (“no need for data model page anymore”). Some users may still prefer it. - Tone: Informative, enthusiastic, solution-focused. --- ## 🔍 DARVO Analysis: - **Deny**: None. - **Attack**: None. - **Reverse Victim/Offender**: None. Tone is neutral and instructive — no DARVO tactics present. --- ## 🔍 SEO Evaluation: - **Keywords**: “Obsidian,” “YAML front matter,” “properties UI.” Well integrated. - **Meta Description**: Missing → Suggest: *“Learn how Obsidian 1.4 improves YAML front matter with a new properties UI and consistency enforcement.”* - **Headers**: Present but could include more keyword-rich H2s. - **Content Length**: Equivalent to ~3,000 words → excellent. - **Internal Links**: Should link to Dataview and Obsidian docs. - **External Links**: Alrea - Summary: If you've ever tried to use Obsidian properties in YAML frontmatter, you may have noticed some issues. Obsidian v1.4 brings a new UI for properties that may just solve some of those, including the difficulty in keeping frontmatter properties and keys consistent. // RESOURCES Sign up for early access to all Obsidian releases: https://obsidian.md/pricing Full changelog: https://obsidian.md/changelog/2023-07-26-desktop-v1.4.0/ How to use the Dataview plugin (video): https://youtu.be/JTObSymEvWA How to use the Templater plugin (video): https://youtu.be/5j9fAvJCaig // TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Issues with Obsidian frontmatter 01:48 New Obsidian properties and property types 05:38 Changing property types 06:53 Links update in frontmatter 08:52 New core Properties plugin 12:20 How this changes your workflow 14:13 How this affects Templater 16:12 Nested keys - Fantasy Calendar 17:50 Banners plugin 18:39 Plugins not affected: ExcaliBrain, Dataview --- // ABOUT ME Site: https://nicolevanderhoeven.com Mastodon: https://pkm.so... - URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RrxqkIhh9L8&feature=share the yaml front matter support andobsidian is one of the best things aboutobsidian but there have always been afew niggling little details about itsimplementation that have rubbed me thewrong way the first is that most peopledon't know yaml and so they might notknow when something's broken becauseit's easy to get the syntax wrong youleave a dash out or you might forget howto define keys and values or you mightforget that the front matter has to beput at the top of the note and the thingjust breaks and you might not even know that it's broken or how to fix it thesecond thing is that while you canDefine links in the front matter whenyou link to a note and then you renamethat note the link isn't updated so thatyou're now referring to a note thatdoesn't exist so a lot of peopleincluding myself have taken to puttingthese links in comments within the bodyof the note but then it's kind of likeyou're doubling up you have the frontmatter and then you have comments whenreally you should be able to to do it using one or the other and the thirdthing is that there's really nothingabout obsidian that enforces consistencyyou might start out with just the basicproperties but trust me you'lleventually add more and more of yourcustom properties than you forget howyou spelled it the last time or what youcalled it and nothing in obsidian reallytells you to stick to those propertiesor the values that you've selected touse and the way that I've solved this isby having a data model page but that isn't really pretty either until nowversion 1.4 in obsidian is out and withit come a lot of changes including a newUI for front matter and properties inthis video I'm going to show youeverything that's new so this is my noteon this video that I'm making right nowit's very meta and you might see thatthere is a brand new properties UIsection here now you can always switchback to how it looked before by going back into Source mode and this is whatit used to look like the eagle-eyedamong you have left comments in aprevious video talking about this verysection asking what brand new plugin Iwas using it wasn't a plug-in I wastesting this release so now the Secret'sout and I can officially talk about itthe first thing you'll notice is thatthere are different icons next to theseproperties and that corresponds to thetype of the properties so you can clickon them and you can select among a variety of property types so the defaultis going to be text if you have a stringhowever there are some smarts behindthis so that it automatically tries toinfer the data type so if you have adate for example it might already choosethe date property type for you text iswhat you might expect and it's probablygoing to be your most common one solet's go over here click add propertyand we can do that now by the UI so I'mgoing going to type topics for example but I'm also going to change this to aproperty type of list so that I can typeout multiple things so a list is kind oflike a multi-select field so I can sayPKM and I'll hit enter and you'll seethat that was added as a separate thingthis is the type that you would use ifyou wanted to be able to choosedifferent values at the same time Imight also say obsidian for example andthen maybe front matter and maybe yaml I'm going to add a property here and I'mgoing to say this one is video ID allright and then I'm going to change thatto a number and maybe I'll say that thisone is 0 0 1. now if I try to typeanything else it won't actually let medo that because I've said that thisfield is a number so this is very goodfor enforcing the types of the valuesthat you're typing in let's add anotherproperty and this time it's going to bea check box let's say this one is edited and I'm going to change it to a checkboxthis is a Boolean value meaning it'seither true or false and that's whythere's a check box there right now it'sset to false and when I click on it it'sset to true now two more things date andtime they're kind of related so let'ssay filming date and then I'll changethat to a date and now I can't even typefreely into this and that's a good thingbecause now I can click on this and there's a nice little date picker so I'mgoing to select today which is July 20thand then let's look at time I wouldn'treally go to this length for this videobut I just thought it would be a coolway to show you the different propertytypes so I'll say filming time and Iwill change this to a time and now thisthis one has a date and a time so it'sjust a little bit more specific so I canselect the date here so I tend to filmpretty late so let's say I started at 11 55. so those were the different typesnow let's flip back over into Sourcemode to see what that looks like whenyou do you'll see that this is actuallystill pretty recognizable so what you'redoing in the UI is still beingtranslated into pure text it's stillgoing to be very future proof you canstill open this in some IDE or whateveryou wanted a text editor and it'll stillmake sense you just won't have the UIyou'll only have that in obsidian but I think it's cool to have this layer kindof like the live preview renders themarkdown but you can always fall back tothe source mode in addition to beingable to set the property type of newproperties you can also change theproperty types of existing ones but youmight run into some issues depending onhow your data is set up for example ifyou click on the no value field here youcan see that I have put a bunch ofdifferent things in this ID column itshould really really just be a number but I've also put things like none I'veput klo2 I mean this is a template andso it's just a little bit all over theplace unfortunately that means that whenI click on property type and I try tochange it it's going to give me an errorthat says some of the data associatedwith this property key is incompatibleso I'm going to go ahead and click thatfrom now on everything that I put inhere is going to have to be a number now that's actually a good thing in the longrun however right now if you have abunch of different values where youhaven't always been so consistent likeme then maybe you'll have to do somerejegging of previous notes to get themto fall in line with the new standardgoing forward let's also create a newproperty here that is called related andwe're just going to leave this as textnow I can show you what a link to a pagelooks like so just by hitting thebrackets it brings up the auto dialogue and then I can put whatever I wanted tolink so let's say I wanted to link toobsidian let's make a link to PKM nowthis link is clickable so just byclicking on it here it goes to the pageright away so it didn't used to beclickable in the front matter before soeven in Source mode we can see that seeit just looks like that and it doesn'treally serve any purpose by just beingthere but in the new default UI it isclickable and when we click on it and let's just change this to something elseleg test after that updates you can seethat it also updated on the left herethis is huge like I said earlier what Iused to do is put things within thesecomments here and this is where I wouldhave put the link to PKM solely so thatit could be clickable and so that itwould update when I renamed the file butI don't have to do that anymore so let'sgo ahead and remove this and see it update again in the same way the linksto notes are automatically parsed andclickable you can also add URLs so I'mgoing to call this video URL and I'mgoing to leave it as a text propertytype and then let's say I want a linkhere this is just my video to anupachinI've done a video on that check it outup there if you want to see that and nowthis is clickable if I click on that soit actually opened up my arc browser and is beginning to play that video you canalso click click on these icons toremove the properties that you no longerneed so I'm just going to be cleaningthese ones up because I don't actuallyneed them so that's the major part ofthe release that there is now a new UIfor front matter that we can use to justmake adding and managing properties alittle bit easier however there'sanother part that I haven't shown youyet while the whole properties UI isgoing to be standard it's it's a core feature of obsidian and it's going to bethe default going forward there is alsoan additional part to this puzzle andthat's a new core plugin calledproperties if we go into settings hereand go down to core plugins there'sgoing to be a new properties plugin thatis going to be enabled by default thismight be a little bit confusing becauseyou might think that this is going toturn off the UI it's not going to whatthis is actually controlling is aseparate property's pane that you can enable and disable I would suggest thatyou leave it enabled for now now let'shave a look at it you can access it byhitting the command palette shortcutcommand or control p and then you cantype properties so you can show all fileproperties and you can also show allproperties so let's see the show fileproperties this is another way of seeingthis information but in another pane soit's really cool because you can be scrolling down somewhere here and stillbe able to see the metadata of that fileI kind of like this view of seeing themetadata on the right side it's kind oflike in finder or in a file explorerview where you have the thing thatyou're actually looking at and then themetadata on the side you can also do allthe things that we were talking aboutchanging the property types removingproperties and adding new properties allfrom this panel you can also switch toSource mode here and still see the properties for the file in the UI modeso you can actually have the best ofboth worlds if you want tothey'll also update in real time so whenyou change something in one the otherone will update because it's reallypointing to the same thing now the otherpart of the properties pane you can goto by going to the command pane againand going to show all properties and bythe way these two you can already justhave hotkeys for I can tell that I'mgoing to be using these quite a bit so I'm going to have to think of somehotkeys because I've got a lot alreadyso when you click on show all propertiesnow this is showing all of theproperties that you have within yourentire Vault so it can be a bitoverwhelming like this date one I've got3971. it's kind of hard to see with thistheme right now but there is also like abit of a different icon here thatcorresponds with these ones that arehere and that gives you a clue as to what they are now when you right clickon something here you can change theproperty type of that property so thisis really good because then you canchange it to anything so if I hit textthen it's saying that some of the dataassociated with the property key areincompatible unfortunately I don'tactually want to do that but it is coolto be able to force different types ifyou were looking for consistency this isa great start it's kind of embarrassing how many different types of front matterI've already managed to collect sothere's interior and intellect Iprobably could have combined them intoone and made that into a number this isa cool thing that I could only havenoticed in this show all properties viewnow just like with any release this onecomes with a bit of a learning curve aswe readjust our workflows to figure outhow we need to do things now whatplugins may have been broken or need to be updated to be able to continue usingthem and I'm going to call out thosethings that I noticed while I've beenplaying with it the first is that you'regoing to have to get used to not seeingthe front matter in Source modes all thetime now maybe this is just a me thingbut it was really hard for me to getused to having the UI rather than thetextum maybe it's like an engineer thing Ijust got used to it a certain way so onething that you could do for that is makesure that you hotkey the switch to Source mode and that's what I've done sonow what I want to flip back and justsee the text like the pure text so thatI know what the UI is doing under thehood then I can just switch to thateasily which you saw me do now anotherthing is that when you hit command a orCtrl a to select everything you might beused to that selecting the front matterit does not so you will first have toswitch to Source mode like I just didwith a shortcut and then hit select allanother thing to keep in mind is that there are still some protected Keysthese are the ones that obsidianrecognizes by default without anyCommunity plugins like dataview so theseare things like CSS class and tagsaliases and publish so you can see thateven though there's no property typecalled Tags it does sort of get its ownproperty type that can only be appliedto that protected key so you're notgoing to be able to add a property thatis going to be a tag one looks like it's still going to let you create a propertycalled tags but it's not actually goingto be a tag and anything that you put inthere is not going to show up as a tagin the tags paneso I just wanted to call that out nowlet's talk about plugins that I havenoticed don't work or might need somerejigging the first is templator earlierI was showing you that I changed theproperty type of this ID property tonumber and it did ask me if I was sure about it and that there were some datathat was incompatible now I did see thatone of the things that was in the valuesfield used to be a template or stringthat's because I have templator enabledand what it used to be was like a promptso that every time I create a new notewith this template then it would ask mewhat the video ID was so let's go aheadand look at that templateit looks like this but if I go into Source mode uh oh it now says that theID is empty and that's because I madethat change in property type to everyinstance of this property including thetemplate so there's no way right now toexclude certain folders like templatesso just be aware that if you have thingslike this where you're using a templateor string and this also holds throughfor the template's core plugin that youmaybe don't want to change that property type just yet maybe just leave it as astring for now I'm sure that thedevelopers are going to add thisfunctionality in the future at least sothat it works with the templates pluginjust be a little bit careful when you'remessing with types especially if you getthat message that says that there aresome things that are incompatible thereis going to be a bit of a period whereyou're going back over your notesprobably just to make sure that all ofthe value values are what you wouldexpect you can also click on the values field to see what else is there andmaybe you can see at a glance what thisneeds to be like I can see from herethat this definitely needs to be a textfield you may also have noticed herethat there is a question mark icon hereand that's because this is not validaccording to the new rules forproperties so if I go to Source modethis is actually using the plug-infantasy calendar which is a communityplugin it was originally intended for ttrpgs but I use it for other things aswell like my content calendar so theseare the fields that are required byfantasy calendar and you'll see thatespecially for this FC date one themonth day and year are nested Keyshowever the new front matter model nolonger supports these nested keys theywould have to be arrays instead whichare defined in this way so you have theproperty here and then the keys aredefined like this so you could have another one that has another elementthere so that's how the UI knows thatthere's more than one element for thatfield and so this just leaves it coldnow instead of like deleting it or orthrowing an error instead it just showsthis question mark and it'll still showthe contents of it but for example ifyou wanted all of these to be numbers ordates then you still won't get anythingfrom changing it because it would also change that nested key structure so justbe aware that if you're using fantasycalendar that you're going to have toput up with not having a nice datepicker at least until Jeremy thedeveloper fixes that as well the goodnews is fantasy calendar still worksstill parses all of this it's just thatyou won't be able to interact with it onthis UI the other one that I noticeddidn't work is probably a bit of a nicheplug-in but it works on the front matteras well so if I go to to TWC here thisis the banners plugin now if I go into Source mode this is what it actuallyshould look like so I'm not entirelysure how the plugin works but I believethat there's something wrong with theparsing of the front matter it isexpecting the source mode rather thanthe UI mode so now I kind of have tostay in Source mode to see this butbecause I have data view plugins and theleaflet plugin then I probablyrealistically would want to stick to therendered live preview version which means I can't use the banner so maybe wejust have to wait a little bit longeruntil that is updated as well someplugins that aren't affected areexcalibrate excalibrain is still able toparse relationships even though that'sset in the front matter and you're stillgoing to be able to Traverse your graphthis way you'll be happy to know thedate of view still works well it stillparses all of the front matter so justbe aware that if you have something likethis where I had separated them by comma but that isn't parsed as separateelements now it's showing if I flip backto the UI it's actually showing theentire location as one thing even when Ineeded this to be three separate thingsso the way that I would fix that is Iwould just add them like this so thattheir elements in an array and then flipback to the UI mode and now there arethree different ones this is goodbecause this is of type list which is what I wanted you might have to becareful of some of those interactionsbecause of the way that you might havedefined different elements before themain takeaway here is consistencyproperty types are now enforced not onlythat but both properties and values haveAuto suggest so that when you start totype or even when you just click on thatfield you get to see a drop down of thedifferent and things that you typed inthe properties or in the values so while it still won't stop you from creatingsomething that's entirely new it doesn'trestrict you from creating newProperties or new values that aresimilar to the old ones it does make ita lot easier if you get into the habitof just checking to see what you'vecreated before so I used to keep a datamodel page for this but honestly it wasa pain to keep updated and I never didand it is already very very long I'mgoing to be happy not to need to have that data model page going forward thelast few releases of obsidian have beenslam dunks the very last one 1.3introduced a new improved PDF viewer andPDF deep links which I have yet to coverbecause it's changing a lot of the waythat I used to process PDFs 1.2 broughtus bookmarks and 1.1 brought us canvasall cool new features and yet thisversion 1.4 is the one that I think I like the most that's because rather thanjust giving me cool new features to playwith which is nice as well this isactually just giving me a betterexperience for a feature that I wasalready using very heavily front matteras of right now version 1.4 theproperty's release is out to insiderswhich means that if you've signed up togive a little bit extra on the Catalystplan which is 25 as a one-time fee whichI think is pretty reasonable then you will already have access to this howeverif you don't and you're just using thefree version of obsidian usually takes acouple weeks before it is released tothe public they're probably going to besome changes between what I've justshown you and what eventually makes itinto the public version but I hope youenjoyed this sneak peek I'm going tokeep you updated on the status ofwhether or not it's out to the public ornot in the first pin comment down thereso keep an eye on that this really stillworks really well with dataview so if you were kind of on the fence on thedataview community plugin then maybethis is your push to finally go andlearn that so check out this video whereI give you a tutorial on how to usedataview all of that will still becompatible with the changes describedhere thank you for watching, Obsidian Properties in YAML Frontmatter, Nicole van der Hoeven, 01h6h2kjjatzswnzjyck7bp5ty.