Changelog

This update introduces Properties, a simple and durable way to add tags, links, dates, and other metadata to your notes. The core plugins Search, Templates, and Backlinks have all received upgrades to support Properties. Some of the new features in this release:

• A new UI for editing properties, with autocomplete for property names and values
• Properties can have types (e.g. text, list, date, number, checkbox) that make it faster to input data
• Properties can contain internal links to other notes
• New sidebar view lists all properties in your vault, and sort by name or frequency
• Keyboard navigation, commands, and hotkeys
• Search syntax for searching notes by property and value
• Templates automatically merge properties with existing properties in the note
• Data is still stored as YAML frontmatter at the top of each Markdown file. Metadata is automatically formatted as valid YAML.

With this update you can also enable two-factor authentication for your Obsidian account.

Properties

Properties help you organize information about a note. Adding properties to a note helps you track structured data such as text, links, dates and numbers. Properties can also be used in combination with Community plugins that can do useful things with your structured data. Learn more.

Basic usage

To add a property to a note, you have several options:

• Use the Add file property command.
• Use the Cmd/Ctrl+; hotkey.
• Choose Add file property from the More actions menu (three dots icon) or right-clicking the tab.
• Type --- at the very beginning of a file.

Once you add a property, a row will appear at the top of the file with two inputs: the property name and the property value. Once you choose the property name you can give it a value and type.

Advanced usage

In addition to the inline property editor, there is a new Properties view core plugin that adds two new views for managing your properties:

• All properties sidebar view shows a list of all the properties across your vault, and number of uses for each. Click on a property to search for all uses of it across your vault.
• File properties sidebar view shows the properties for the active file. If you prefer to hide the inline property editor, you can choose to edit your file properties from the sidebar, without losing your place in the active file.

Properties are an extremely powerful yet flexible feature that gives you even more ways to organize your information. See the documentation for Properties for even more information.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) for Obsidian accounts

For even more security, you can now enable two-factor authentication on your Obsidian account. To do so, go to obsidian.md/account and enable "2-factor authentication". This will prompt you with setup instructions.

Note: Any devices logging into Obsidian must be running v1.4.5+ to log-in using two-factor authentication.

Core plugin upgrades

• Search: New search syntax for properties.
  • To find notes containing a property, use [property]
  • To find notes with a property and a corresponding value, use [property:value]
  • Both property and value allow complex sub-queries, such as parentheses for grouping, the OR operator, double-quotes for exact matching, and regex.
• Templates: When using the "Insert template" command, properties inside template files will be merged with the current file.
• Backlinks: Properties with links will now properly show in backlink entries.
• Note Composer: Merging notes will now merge their properties.

Misc. improvements

• Search: Search autocomplete will now be shown based on the current input context.
• Live Preview now supports single column tables.
• Tag autocomplete now uses a fuzzy search algorithm.
• PDF: Added “Copy as quote” and “Copy annotation” context menu options
• PDF: Added a button to copy annotations from the annotation popup
• PDF: Added “Copy link to page” to PDF thumbnail context menu
• Editor: Formatting commands for bold, italic, etc are now context-aware. For example, "Toggle bold" inside a bolded sentence will un-bold the sentence.
• Search: Removed the delay between typing and search happening.
• Sync: Always show a visual representation of storage usage.
• Numbers everywhere should now be formatted in the app. For example, word count and character count will have thousands separators.
• The Tags core plugin has been renamed to "Tags view".

No longer broken

• Fixed: PDF Viewer single page view resets to first page.
• Fixed: PDF viewer search settings unclickable when toggling sidebar.
• Fixed bug where closing an pop-out window with an active modal would keep the modal active.
• macOS: In frameless window mode, the top-right buttons no longer shift when creating/closing tab groups.
• File Recovery will now show a loading state when loading large vaults.
• Workspace: fix "follow link under cursor" commands in Canvas.
• Canvas: nudging selection should not cause stacked tabs to scroll.
• Outline: Fixed outline not rendering if the view was opened via the "Show outline" command.
• The "New tab" view will now show the current hotkeys.
• Editor: Scroll bar should no longer affect the position of the text when it appears on long documents.
• Vim: Fix for spellchecker.

Developers

• The installer has been updated to use Electron v25.8.0 (requires downloading the latest installer).
• Vault: createFolder now return a TFolder.
• Metadata: FrontMatterCache no longer inherits from CacheItem.
• Theming: new CSS variables have been added for Properties that start with --metadata
• Disabled soft line width in stringifyYaml (this was causing some breakages with other plugins reading the YAML).

About Properties

Internal Links

Internal links can be added to frontmatter using the following syntax:

---
link: "[[Link]]"
linklist:
  - "[[Link]]"
  - "[[Link2]]"
---

About tag/alias/cssclass properties

As of 1.4.0, we have deprecated the "tag", "alias", and "cssClass" properties. The property editor will automatically convert these properties to tags, aliases, and cssclasses and the values will automatically be converted to lists.

The old property names will still be identified correctly in the app, but the property editor will always prefer tags, cssClasses, and aliases.

• PDF: Fixed text selection.
• There is now a loading screen when loading the Obsidian Sync view.
• Added support for 2FA login.

Shiny new things

• Obsidian accounts now support two-factor authentication. To enable, go to your account settings at obsidian.md/account. Make sure you've installed the v1.4.5 Insider build before enabling 2FA on your account to avoid getting locked out.

Improvements

• macOS: Added additional formatting commands to the app menu.

No longer broken

• Search: Searching for an exact property match is no longer case sensitive (e.g. [property:value] will also show matches for "Property").
• Properties: Making changes to the casing of a property ("property" vs. "PROPERTY") will now properly save.
• Properties: It is no longer possible to have multiple property types with the same spelling and different casing. Properties with the same spelling will now always resolve to the same property type.
• Properties: It is no longer possible to change the default property type.
• Properties: Pressing Enter on an empty list entry will no longer display an error message.
• Properties can no longer have both 'tag' and '#tag' as entries in the same file.
• Canvas: Frontmatter in canvas text cards will no longer be hidden.
• Properties: Fixed tag dropdown showing briefly in the top-level corner when removing a tag.
• Editor: Fixed "Insert code block" and "Insert match block" working with multiple cursors.
• macOS: Fixed "Date & time" showing as "Date time" in the property menu.

Shiny new things

• Search: New search syntax for properties.
  • To find notes containing a property, use [property]
  • To find notes with a property and a corresponding value, use [property:value]
  • Both property and value allow complex sub-queries, such as parentheses for grouping, the OR operator, double-quotes for exact matching, and regex.
• Search: Search autocomplete will now be shown based on the current input context.

Improvements

• Editor: Formatting commands for bold, italic, etc are now context-aware. For example, "Toggle bold" inside a bolded sentence will un-bold the sentence.
• Backlinks: Properties with links will now properly show in backlink entries.
• Sync: Always show a visual representation of storage usage.
• Note Composer: Merging notes will now merge their properties.
• Properties: Tags can optionally start with a leading '#'.
• Properties: Fixed middle-clicking on links.
• Properties: Renamed the property type 'Time' to 'Date & time' for clarity.

No longer broken

• Live Preview: Fixed frontmatter sometimes appearing under properties for a split second while editing.
• Properties: Clicking on properties will now use the new search syntax for finding properties.
• Properties: Fixed heading links inside list properties always appearing as broken links.
• Properties: Fixed being unable to use up/down arrows when frontmatter is showing.
• Properties: Fixed frequency sort in the properties view.
• Properties: List property now saves when it loses focus.
• Vim: Fix for spellchecker.

Developers

• SearchComponent is now properly exported.
• Theme: New display variables for reading and editing mode:
  • --metadata-display-reading
  • --metadata-display-editing

Improvements

• Settings: Added a new toggle to show properties as source (YAML) in Live Preview.
• Templates: When using the "Insert template" command, properties inside template files will be merged with the current file.
• Added a new status bar item that shows the number of properties in the currently active note.
• The Properties heading can now receive keyboard focus. When focused, use the left and right arrow keys to toggle the section open or closed.
• The Tags core plugin has been renamed to "Tags view."
• The Properties core plugin has been renamed to "Properties view."

No longer broken

• Live Preview now supports single column tables.
• The Property value autosuggest will no longer return stale values.
• Fixed headings not scaling with base font size.
• Numbers everywhere should now be formatted in the app. For example, word count and character count will have thousands separators.
• Fixed bug where "Show file properties" view would not show the file properties on initial load.
• Canvas: Frontmatter in Canvas cards is no longer hidden.
• Added instructions to suggest boxes in Properties editor.
• Enabled copy/cut/paste in Properties sidebar view.
• Clicking quickly on close-tab button will no longer trigger maximize-window on macOS.
• Added max date to Date and Time properties; so no more referencing dates beyond the year 9,999.
• Fixed bug when selecting an alias from the link suggest causing the heading getting removed from the link.
• Date and Time properties now use Moment.js for parsing meaning it will now be more lax when reading formatted dates in properties.
• Search: The 'Show more context' button can be pressed multiple times in a row.
• Properties: fixed typing accented characters in text properties.
• Properties: fold state is now saved to the note.
• Fixed issue with inserting properties when auto-pairing markdown is disabled.
• Fixed the "Add file property" command not reusing the current file properties view.
• Properties: disabled autosuggest for aliases.
• Properties sidebar view won't show "add properties" button if the active file is not a markdown file.
• Editor Search: Fixed issue where \´ character was treated as space ( ).

Developers

• Disabled soft line width in stringifyYaml (this was causing some breakages with other plugins reading the YAML).

Improvements

• Properties: Date and time properties will now automatically be inferred without needing to assign the property type.
• Properties: Emails will now be recognized as links in text and list properties.
• Properties: External URLs are now clickable inside list properties.
• Properties: "Add new property" command now works with the properties sidebar view.
• Typing --- at the start of the document will now automatically insert the complementary ---.
• Properties: Add support for dragging and dropping links into text and list properties.
• Search: Removed the delay between typing and search happening.

No longer broken

• Properties: Fixed bug causing properties with upper-case characters to not display the correct property type.
• Live Preview: Frontmatter will no longer appear when switching from source mode to Live Preview with the cursor still in the frontmatter section.
• Live Preview: Fixed cursor "dead spots" where text could not be edited at a given selection.
• Properties: Shift-Enter will now accept the current text value without selecting the highlighted suggestion.
• Properties: Property values are now sorted alphabetically when the suggest appears.
• Properties: Switching a text property to a list property will automatically convert the value without warning about a type mismatch.
• Properties: The "add property" row will be removed if you click away without creating a new property.
• Properties: App URIs (such as obsidian://) will now be recognized as external links.
• Properties: Parsing YAML is now much stricter. Unsupported frontmatter types will now properly be recognized as invalid, such as having an array.
• Properties: Tab and Shift-Tab will now properly shift focus if the "Add properties" button is focused.
• Settings: "Show file properties" setting has been renamed to "Show file properties in document."
• Editor: Scroll bar should no longer affect the position of the text when it appears on long documents.

New shiny things

• Added support for deep linking in PDFs. Links can be created by right clicking on a PDF's table of contents, an annotation, or any selected text.
• New "Adapt to theme" menu option for PDFs. Enabling this will override the PDF appearance so its rendered to match the styling of the current theme
• New Appearance setting to apply a custom app icon. Supports .ico and .png files.

Improvements

• Tab close button is now hidden for inactive tabs and will only appear on hover. This creates more space for file names inside the tab.
• Improved how headings are displayed. Headings in Live Preview and Reading mode should now more closely match in appearance. Note this requires installer version 1.1.9 or above.

No longer broken

• Spellcheck setting is now stored app-wide properly, instead of having some vaults overriding others.
• Live Preview: Markdown tables are now allowed to start immediately after headings without a blank line.
• Fixed bug where embedded PDFs and markdown files sometimes lose their scroll position.
• Fixed issue where the initial switch from edit mode to reading mode causes the scroll position to be lost.
• Fixed issue where reading mode scrolls unexpectedly when opening new tabs.
• Fixed styling issue where extra space was being added between lists and sublists.
• Canvas: Allow opening external links in webviews.
• Mermaid: Fixed some color issues.

Developers

New CSS variables:

• --p-spacing defines the spacing between paragraphs (defaults to 1rem).
• --heading-spacing defines the spacing above a heading when it follows a paragraph (defaults to 2.5x paragraph spacing).

Improvements

• New icon for the Properties view.

No longer broken

• Properties: Fixed autocomplete attempting to insert []() style Markdown links if "Use Wikilinks" is disabled in settings.
• Properties: The "All Properties" view will treat properties as case-insensitive. For example, instances of "TAGS" and "tags" will be shown as the same property.
• Properties: Fixed frontmatter inside Canvas text cards generating console errors.
• Properties: Creating a link to a nonexistent note will no longer insert an extra set of "]]" brackets.
• Properties: Fixed copy/pasting text within properties not working.
• Properties: Fixed "Edit file property" command not showing in the command palette.
• Properties: The "Remove" menu item in the context menu of "All Properties" has been renamed to "Unassign type" to avoid confusion.

Shiny new things

Introducing Properties. A simple and durable way to add tags, aliases, dates, and other metadata to your notes. Your properties can even include links to other notes.

Usage

• New visual editor for properties in Live Preview and Reading mode.
• Property types:
  • Text — supports internal links
  • List — supports internal links
  • Number
  • Checkbox
  • Date
  • Time
• New commands for interacting with properties:
  • Add file property (Ctrl/Command + ;)
  • Clear properties
  • Edit property
  • Show all properties
  • Show file properties
• All properties sidebar pane shows a list of all the properties across your vault, and number of uses for each.
• File properties sidebar pane shows the properties for the active file.
• Cut/copy/paste properties.

Portability

Properties are saved directly to your note as frontmatter, a special section at the beginning of your file, encoded in YAML. This makes your note metadata readable in any plain text app, and compatible with many tools that support YAML frontmatter.

Improvements

• Tag autocomplete now uses a fuzzy search algorithm.
• PDF: Added “Copy as quote” and “Copy annotation” context menu options.
• PDF: Added a button to copy annotations from the annotation popup.
• PDF: Added “Copy link to page” to PDF thumbnail context menu.
• Mermaid as been upgraded to v10.

No longer broken

• Fixed: PDF Viewer single page view resets to first page.
• Fixed: PDF viewer search settings unclickable when toggling sidebar.
• Fixed bug where closing an pop-out window with an active modal would keep the modal active.
• macOS: In frameless window mode, the top-right buttons no longer shift when creating/closing tab groups.
• File Recovery modal will now show a loading state when loading large vaults.
• Workspace: fix "follow link under cursor" commands in Canvas.
• Canvas: nudging selection should not cause stacked tabs to scroll.
• Outline: Fixed outline not rendering if the view was opened via the "Show outline" command.
• The "New tab" view will now show the current hotkeys.
• Fixed sometimes arrows and markers disappear from mermaid diagrams. (Credits to @Bunker-D)

Developers

• Vault: createFolder now return a TFolder.
• Metadata: FrontMatterCache no longer inherits from CacheItem.
• Theming: new CSS variables have been added for Properties that start with --metadata.

About Properties

Internal Links

Internal links can be added to frontmatter using the following syntax:

---
link: "[[Link]]"
linklist:
  - "[[Link]]"
  - "[[Link2]]"
---

tag/alias/cssclass vs tags/aliases/cssclasses

As of 1.4.0, we're deprecating the "tag", "alias", and "cssClass" frontmatter keys. The new property editor will automatically migrate to tags, aliases, and cssclasses and the values will automatically be converted to lists.

The old keys will still be identified correctly in the app, but the property editor will always prefer tags and aliases.

Improvements

• When using stacked tabs the close button is always displayed on the spine

No longer broken

• Social cards and meta descriptions are now automatically stripped of Markdown formatting syntax

• Includes all new functionality and bug fixes up to Obsidian Desktop v1.3.7.

No longer broken

• Removed command that wasn't ready for release just yet.
• Fixed styling issue where extra space was being added between lists and sublists.

New shiny things

• New Appearance setting to apply a custom app icon. Supports .ico and .png files.
• Added support for deep linking in PDFs. Links can be created by right clicking on a PDF's table of contents, an annotation, or any selected text.
• New "Adapt to theme" menu option for PDFs. Enabling this will override the PDF appearance so its rendered to match the styling of the current theme

Improvements

• Tab close button is now hidden for inactive tabs and will only appear on hover. This creates more space for file names inside the tab.
• Improved how headings are displayed. Headings in Live Preview and Reading mode should now more closely match in appearance. Note this requires installer version 1.1.9 or above.

No longer broken

• Spellcheck setting is now stored app-wide properly, instead of having some vaults overriding others.
• Live Preview: Markdown tables are now allowed to start immediately after headings without a blank line.
• Fixed bug where embedded PDFs and markdown files sometimes lose their scroll position.
• Fixed issue where the initial switch from edit mode to reading mode causes the scroll position to be lost.
• Fixed issue where reading mode scrolls unexpectedly when opening new tabs.
• Canvas: Allow opening external links in webviews.
• Mermaid: Fixed some color issues.

Developers

New CSS variables:

• --p-spacing defines the spacing between paragraphs (defaults to 1rem).
• --heading-spacing defines the spacing above a heading when it follows a paragraph (defaults to 2.5x paragraph spacing).

• New app icon! Learn more on our blog.
• Includes all new functionality and bug fixes up to Obsidian Desktop v1.3.5.
• Fixed issues with zooming PDFs on iOS devices.

Shiny new things

• New app icon! Learn more on our blog. Requires downloading the new installer.

Improvements

• Pressing Shift Enter while the [[ link suggest is showing will now skip the autocomplete and accept the current input as the full link.

No longer broken

• Pressing esc while renaming a file will now properly cancel the rename instead of accepting the change.
• Fixed PDFs not loading in pop-out windows when the main window is minimized.
• Fixed issue where the [[ link suggest would not always work if ]] was not found on the current line.

Improvements

• Reverted behavior change for links in pinned tabs. Clicking them will now open the link in another visible tab that is not pinned.
• Reverted behavior for "Open to the right" as well as the Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + Click modifier. A new tab group will now always be created for the new tab.
• When deleting a file, if the open tab containing that file has navigation history, the tab will no longer be closed. Instead it will show the most recent file from the history.

No longer broken

• Prevent math from inserting links that execute JavaScript when clicked on.
• Prevent plugins from breaking the PDF viewer.
• Fixed lag issues from warnings generated by plugins misusing renderMarkdown.

• Includes all new functionality and bug fixes up to Obsidian Desktop v1.3.3. This includes the new PDF viewer.
• Live Preview: Reduce flickering and flashing when selecting text.
• Adding text to an existing file via Share menu will always append text to the end of the file.
• iOS: Fixed Canvas unable to drop images dragged from other apps.
• iPad: Fixed issue where cursor and scroll position are messed up after dismissing the keyboard via the virtual keyboard's "close keyboard button."
• iPad: Fixed switching apps causes Obsidian to lose text focus.

No longer broken

• Fixed "split right" command not always creating a new tab group.
• Bookmarks: Fixed bookmark group rename not working.
• PDF: Fixed PDF reload when other files are changed.
• Fixed clicking in documents with embeds, images, or raw HTML sometimes causes scroll jump.

Shiny new things

• YouTube and Twitter links can now be embedded within your notes using the Markdown image embed syntax (i.e. ![](https://www.youtube.com/...)).
• Clicking on external links inside <iframe> now properly open them in the default browser.

Improvements

• Improved Live Preview rendering performance when moving the cursor.
• Quick switcher: Bookmarks no longer rank higher in the search results.
• PDF tabs will now automatically reload the PDF file when it is modified outside of Obsidian.
• New hotkeys for interacting with the File explorer:
  • F2 to start renaming the focused file.
  • Space to open the focused file.
  • macOS: Enter to start renaming the focused file (to follow the OS convention).
  • macOS: Cmd + ArrowDown to open the focused file.
• Live Preview: Markdown tables now require a blank line before them in order to render. This makes the behavior consistent with reading mode and offers better interoperability with other Markdown apps.

No longer broken

• Linux: fixed issues with middle-click triggering paste when it shouldn't.
• Renaming a file in the tab title bar now finishes the rename when using the Enter and Tab key.
• Long tables that exceed the view width will now show a scrollbar.
• Fixed missing first column when pasting a Markdown table.
• File Explorer: fixed "Reveal file in navigation" not always scrolling the file into view.
• Fixed Alt + Click in file explorer not setting the focused file properly.
• Fixed alignment of icons inside tree components.
• Search: Clicking filenames in the search results will now respect the "Always focus new tabs" preference.
• Frontmatter will now still be recognized if there are spaces after the ending ---.
• Fixed file saving interrupted when closing or quitting. Now Obsidian will properly wait for the file to be saved before closing.

Improvements

• We've redesigned all the tree components (e.g. File Explorer, Outline view) to make the visual hierarchy more clear. This will likely impact any custom themes that you're using.
• PDF: Improved text selection.
• PDF: Added menu for embedded PDFs.
• New behavior for "Open to the right" as well as the Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + Click modifier. Instead of always creating a new tab group, if there is a tab group to the right of the current tab, it will open the link in that tab group.
• Outline: The outline view now supports keyboard navigation and preserves folded headings.
• Obsidian Sync: Improved how Sync handles changing the casing for folder names (e.g. "some folder" → "Some Folder").

No longer broken

• Collapsing items in the file explorer will now look visually better (previously the fold indicator of child elements would also appear to collapse as well).
• Bookmarks: Fixed bookmark group not being populated in the Edit Bookmark modal.
• Bookmarks: Hover preview no longer immediately hides after opening.
• Bookmarks: Opening a bookmark with "Always focus new tabs" disabled will now still focus the newly created bookmark.
• Spellcheck is now enabled when renaming files from the file explorer or from the tab title bar.
• Backlinks: Fixed mod-clicking on backlinks not respecting the "Always focus new tabs" preference.

Developers

• App will no longer show errors when plugins don't provide a "Component," to renderMarkdown, they will now just show a warning.