This article will guide you on how you can batch edit properties in your Obsidian notes.
As an avid Obsidian user, I understand the importance of keeping your notes organized and structured. One key aspect of this is managing properties or YAML frontmatter across your notes.
Imagine, you have a large vault containing hundreds or even thousands of notes, and you need to make a change to a specific property across all of them.
Perhaps you want to add a new tag, modify an existing one, or remove an unnecessary property.
If you want to maintain consistency across all of your notes, how do you do it?
Opening each note individually and manually editing the properties would be incredibly time-consuming.
I also faced this problem. And after researching for a bit, and experimenting with a few solutions, I came across this plugin called Linter. This plugin helps us do exactly what we want to.
Obsidian Linter Plugin
Obsidian Linter is a powerful community plugin. It helps to create a consistent format and style in your notes.
Other than giving us the ability to add, remove, or modify properties with just a few clicks, it offers other powerful features.
In this article, we’ll only talk about editing YAML frontmatter aka properties.
Installing the Plugin
- In Obsidian, navigate to the “Community plugins” section
- Search for “Linter.”
- Click “Install” and then “Enable” the plugin.
- Once enabled, you can access the plugin’s settings by going to “Settings” > “Plugins” > “Linter.”
Batch Adding Obsidian Properties
Follow this method to add properties to multiple notes at once.
1. In the plugin settings, navigate to the “YAML” section and enable the “Insert YAML attributes” option.
2. Enter the property you want to add, one per line (e.g., “writing” or “status: draft”).
3. Open the command palette and search for “Linter: Lint all files in the current folder” or “Linter: Lint all files in the vault.” (Based on your preferences)
Once linter finishes its operation, the specified property will be added to all notes in the selected folder or the entire vault.
You can even specify properties as checkboxes by adding “false” after the property name (e.g., “writing: false”).
Batch Removing Obsidian Properties
Follow these steps to remove batch remove properties from your Obsidian notes.
- In the plugin settings, navigate to the “YAML” section and enable the “Remove YAML keys” option.
2. Enter the property you want to remove, one per line (e.g., “reading” or “status”).
Note: The properties are case sensitive
3. Open the command palette and search for “Linter: Lint all files in the current folder” or “Linter: Lint all files in the vault.”
The specified property will be removed from all notes in the selected folder or the entire vault.
Batch Replacing Obsidian Properties
To replace a property across multiple notes, you can combine the removing and adding steps:
1. Follow the steps for removing the old property.
2. Follow the steps for adding the new property.
For example, if you want to replace the “medium” property with “source,” you enable the “Insert YAML attributes” option and “Remove YAML keys” with respective fields.
Then lint those files to get the desired result.
Other Features
The Obsidian Linter plugin offers several other useful features that can further streamline your note-taking workflow:
- Converting inline metadata to front matter properties: If you have inline metadata scattered throughout your notes, you can easily convert them to YAML front matter properties with a single command.
- Moving tags to YAML front matter: Similarly, you can move inline tags to the YAML front matter section, keeping your notes organized and consistent.
- Removing or keeping tags in the note body: When moving tags to front matter, you can choose to remove or keep the original tags in the note body, depending on your preferences.
Bottom-line
Linter plugins and its features can be valuable, particularly when you are transitioning from one note-taking style to another.
With linter plugin, you can ensure a consistent and well-structured organization across your entire Obsidian Vault.
If you found the article valuable, you’d love Obsidian Ninja.
