Information about a note. For example, In [[Building a Second Brain]](which is the example I'll be using for the rest of this note), there are fields about the note like `Created`, `Author`, `Finished`, `Rating` ### Types of Metadata #### Frontmatter Metadata If I wanted to add the data `hoursSlept` with a value of 8, I can add a property at the top of my note: ```button type command name Add file property (Ctrl/Cmd+;) action Add file property ``` Frontmatter usually looks something like this: ``` --- hoursSlept: 8 --- ``` But as of August 31 2023, Obsidian made it more user friendly by making it similar to Notion's properties 😁 If you need to learn more, you can watch my video on how to go from properties beginner to pro:  #### Inline Metadata Fields Another way to create fields to have it inline in the text, with two colons after the name. Make sure there's a space between the `::` and the value and the field is at the start of it's own line, or else it won't work. It should look something like: Field:: Awesome Value Having it after a bullet point also works. If you do want to include it after some text though, you can use square brackets like so: [inTextField:: Awesomer Value] Here's proof of both working: ```dataview table Field, inTextField where file.name = "Metadata" ``` ##### Uses Useful for [[Daily notes#Tag-based logs]] #### Why to use one over the other Frontmatter metadata (also known as properties) is what I tend to use since it is natively part of Obsidian. And with their upcoming feature on dynamic views, I feel having them native will make it compatible for this upcoming update. But there's still some missing features that I personally need, and am using [[Metadata Menu Plugin]] to solve. - **Reason 1:** Different types of notes have different set values for different fields - ex. For a note's status: - Normal notes tagged `#note` use the [[My Greenhouse]] tagging system - [[My Brainstorms|My Brainstorms]] has 3 colored squares, and [[My Projects]] has 5 to distinguish the different phases - But thanks to [[Metadata Menu Plugin#FileClass Fields]], you can define what values can be for each type of note type you have by assigning it the tag. - If you look at [[input]] fileClass note, you can see how I override the default note Status (`🌱, 🌿, 🌲`) to be the squares - **Reason 2:** There's no way to automatically suggest property values unless you have already set it in a previous note - But with the plugin, if you choose the `Link` icon in [[Project Template]] it will search through all areas you have in your vault (notes with the `#area` tag), even if you haven't necessarily used that area as a value for the `Area` field yet in a different note. - **Reason 3:** You can only access the properties of a note when you have it actively open, via the top menu or the sidebar pane - I'm sounding like a broken record, but with the plugin you can access it via link or anything! Check out any note's icon to the right like [[Vault Onboarding]] there is a clipboard icon you can use to adjust the fields ### Uses - Can view this data in [[Dataview Plugin|Dataview queries]] for a semi-automatic way to sort your notes and resurface them when you need in [[View notes]] ### Common Metadata - `Status` helps with keeping track of notes you need to work on, to know what stage of the knowledge process a certain note is at - `Tags` gives you a place to put hashtags to classify the note type it is, which is useful for plugins like [[Metadata Menu Plugin]] - `Links` help you link things to a parent note ### Plugins To help make classifying metadata per note easier based on the type of note it is, I personally use [[Metadata Menu Plugin#FileClasses]] which lets me classify a note using a tag.