Summary

Obsidian has introduced a new properties feature in its desktop app, enhancing note-taking with metadata capabilities and a user-friendly interface, streamlining the process of organizing and managing notes.

Abstract

The latest update to Obsidian's desktop application has made the properties feature publicly available, allowing users to add and manage metadata in their notes more intuitively. This feature simplifies the use of YAML for metadata, making it more accessible and less prone to errors. Properties can be displayed and edited directly in the note or through a sidebar, depending on the editing mode. Obsidian provides default properties such as aliases, CSS classes, and tags, along with the ability to create custom properties with various types like text, list, number, checkbox, date, and date & time. The new properties system is compared to Notion's functionality, offering a dynamic and interactive way to maintain consistency across notes. While the mobile app does not yet support properties, the feature is expected to be added in the future. The article suggests that the properties feature significantly improves the Obsidian experience by making metadata management easy and efficient.

Opinions

The author finds the new properties feature to be a significant enhancement, making Obsidian's note-taking experience more similar to Notion's.
The complexity of YAML is noted as a negative aspect of the previous metadata system, which the new properties feature successfully addresses.
The ability to link notes within metadata and the rendering of incoming and outgoing links is highlighted as a particularly liked feature.
The author appreciates the dynamic and interactive nature of properties, which helps maintain consistency in notes and simplifies the process of adding and editing metadata.
It is mentioned that while Obsidian's properties are a great addition, they do not fully replace Notion's advanced functionalities.
The article encourages readers to subscribe to ObsidianNinja and recommends an AI service, ZAI.chat, as a cost-effective alternative to ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4).

Obsidian Properties: Everything You Need to Know About

Obsidian has launched the properties feature for the public with the latest update. This is only available on the desktop app. The mobile app doesn’t currently support properties. You will need to wait a bit for that.

Properties are not an entirely new thing. They are a powered-up way to add metadata to your notes.

Forget the complexities of YAML. While the metadata still uses YAML format, it is easier than ever. You can edit metadata on the note itself. You no longer need to understand YAML. And you don’t run the risk of breaking the syntaxes.

The new properties feature can make your Obsidian experience somewhat similar to using Notion

In this article, we’ll explore what properties are and what you can do with them.

Using Properties Feature

To view your properties, go to Editor> Display> Properties in Document. Right there, choose the option to make the properties visible.

Let’s create a new note and see how it works.

By default, the note will not have any properties. It’s an empty note. To add properties to your notes, you will need to use the command palette or the assigned hotkey.

If you edit in source mode, a sidebar will open with the option to add properties. But if you edit in live preview mode, the properties will be shown in the editor itself.

Default properties

By default, you can have properties.

aliases: Alias is an alternative name to a note that you can use to refer to it
cssclasses: This helps to apply the custom CSS to style individual notes
tags: This property will show all the tags used in your vault. It makes it way easy to add tags to your notes.

Custom properties

Besides the 3 default properties, you can add as many properties as you want. The different available property types are:

Text
List
Number
Checkbox
Date
Date & Time

The one I really liked was the ability to link to other notes in metadata. It will also render the ingoing and outgoing links of both letters. Cool, Right?

Another thing you can do if you don’t want to see all the properties in your notes is hide them from settings and view them on the sidebar when you feel it's necessary to.

Here’s why I think Obsidian Properties is such a great addition towards a better Obsidian Experience:

Easy to use: Else, you would have to add metadata in YAML frontmatter which can be pretty ineffective. It’s easy to mess up with the syntaxes. Properties are more dynamic and interactive.
Makes your note more consistent: With properties and a visual way to add metadata, you will have more consistency in the metadata of your notes. Adding and editing property values is easier. You are able to see all the previously used metadata in your notes. Such as while adding tags, you will access all tags in your vault. You just pick the right one and ‘Enter’.

Few More Things

Properties feature is not yet fully implemented in Obsidian mobile. And for people thinking will they be able to replace Notion’s feature, the answer is No. Notion offers a lot more advanced functionality and Obsidian is not quite there yet.

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