NotePlan
NotePlan
Jul 2

Allow YAML frontmatter in notes

We can use YAML frontmatter in notes, but this currently means all those notes have the unhelpful title `---`. Better handling frontmatter would mean that additional fields can be set in notes, which can then be add value for plugins. It would also be relevant for https://noteplan.canny.io/interoperability/p/choose-note-ref… as NP could then pick up a `title: ...` line and use that to name the note. Ideally frontmatter would be visually distinguished from the rest of the note, as happens in Typora, Obsidian and other editors. Perhaps to be like the Reference section?
CompletedCompleted

May 26, 2025

Released in the past two updates

Mar 5, 2025

Beta available: https://noteplan.co/changelog/v3.16.3-frontmatter-editor

Feb 28, 2025

YAML should be added automatically to each note like in Obsidian

Feb 20, 2025

Looks nice!

Feb 19, 2025

Working on it! This is a rough mockup (already coded)

Feb 19, 2025

Eduard Metzger Looks like there are data types associated with those pieces of front matter… does that mean you can enforce your data to be a string, a number, a date, etc? (Looks great btw!)

Feb 19, 2025

Eduard Metzger Looks great, thank you for working on this! Excited to see how it will turn out :) especially now that we have more options for filtering/sorting/kanban views etc. So many possibilities!

Feb 19, 2025

Len Damico I will be all text for now, but we should probably have data types as well

Feb 18, 2025

Yes please!!

Feb 10, 2025

Can this not be done with existing theming tools?

Jan 28, 2025

This has been up for a long time, so I'm wondering if there is any plans in 2025 for this? Thank you!

Dec 10, 2024

For the record, some of this is now done, but the visually distinguishing isn't.

Jan 17, 2023

I'd love to learn more about how you're all using all of that data with NotePlan! I know how it can be used in Obsidian etc, but how are you making it actionable in NotePlan?

Jan 18, 2024

Daniel Danilov: 1. We can search for the data in there. Especially if those properties get some attention in filters. 2. We can, hopefully, if not natively, through a plug-in create entire notes that update based on specific parameters. I.e the Stub Wiki plugin allows you to look at at that lists all current stubs. 3. Since all files are .md, we can leverage it in other applications. I know I am not the only one that accesses their NP files in other applications. 4. It can work like templates. Which populate in different areas based on the template type. 5. Speaking of templates, we can use the templater plugin to generate dynamic placeholders that pull specific metadata. Instead of filling for title or date, we can define a type and add display that when generating a note from template. If they give us the functionality, we will use it. It is incredibly popular is many PKM tools and it is a fantastic way to keep your nota clean while still having useful data linked to it.

Jan 19, 2024

Edwin Jr.: Thanks for elaborating! I agree, and have seen multiple use cases since my comment last year. I especially like Obsidian's approach (with the table format) to the frontmatter and think it would be incredible powerful for NotePlan.

May 26, 2022

Looking for clever ideas.

May 26, 2022

Definitely, the problem is only that frontmatter is hard to detect for the theming engine which runs on individual lines (to improve performance). Except the code fencing one, which is more or less a separate process. So we need to integrate it with that somehow.