Conditional Properties

Automate your frontmatter with smart IF/THEN rules. Set properties, modify titles, and keep your vault organized—automatically.

Why Use This Plugin?

Stop manually updating properties across hundreds of notes. Define rules once, run everywhere. Perfect for:

• 🏷️ Auto-tagging notes based on content
• 📊 Maintaining consistent metadata
• 🔄 Bulk property updates
• ⏰ Scheduled maintenance
• 🎯 Targeted scope (latest created/modified notes)

Core Features

🎯 Flexible Conditions

• Multiple conditions per rule (new in v0.17.0): combine conditions with Match any (OR) or Match all (AND) — inspired by Zotero's "match any/all of the following" UI.
• 6 operators: exactly, contains, notContains, exists, notExists, isEmpty
• Property-based: Check any frontmatter property
• Title-based: Use note titles (H1 or inline) as conditions

⚡ Powerful Actions

• ADD: Add values without duplicating
• REMOVE: Remove specific values
• OVERWRITE: Replace entire property
• DELETE PROPERTY: Remove property completely
• CHANGE TITLE: Add prefix/suffix or overwrite with dynamic dates, filenames, or other property values
• Placeholders in action values (new in v0.20.0): reference any frontmatter property inline as {propertyName}, alongside the existing {date}, {date:FORMAT}, and {filename} placeholders. Works in property values and in title text.
• Typed property awareness (new in v0.19.0): when the target property is registered as checkbox, date, or datetime, values are written with the right YAML type instead of as plain strings — so whatsapp: true lands as a real boolean (renders as a checked checkbox), and created_at: 08-08-2025 is parsed and stored as 2025-08-08 (renders in the Obsidian date widget).

🎛️ Smart Execution

• Run on demand: Entire vault or current file only
• Stop button (new in v0.18.0): cancel a running scan; the current file finishes cleanly and remaining files are skipped
• Scheduled scans: Set intervals (min 5 minutes)
• Scoped scanning: Latest created, latest modified, or entire vault
• Configurable count: Process 1-1000 notes at once

🛡️ Safe & Private

• Only modifies frontmatter (body content preserved)
• All processing happens locally
• No data leaves your device

Quick Examples

Auto-tag meetings:

IF property: type = "meeting"
THEN ADD tags: work, important

Archive old projects:

IF property: status = "archived"
THEN REMOVE tags: active, wip

Date-stamp completed tasks:

IF property: status = "done"
THEN Change Title: Add suffix " - {date:DD/MM/YYYY}"

Standardize meeting note titles:

IF title contains: "Meeting"
THEN Change Title: Overwrite to "{date:YYYY-MM-DD} - {filename}"

Result: 2026-01-08 - team-sync

Clean up deprecated data:

IF property: tags = "old-project"
THEN DELETE PROPERTY: legacy_data

Title-based tagging:

IF title contains: "Meeting"
THEN ADD tags: meeting, important

Typed Properties (Checkbox / Date / Datetime)

Some Obsidian property types have native widgets (the checkmark for checkbox, the calendar for date, the calendar+clock for datetime). For the widget to render correctly, the YAML must store the value with the right type — boolean for checkbox, ISO date for date/datetime. Strings won't trigger the widgets, even if the property is registered with the right type.

Since v0.19.0, the plugin detects when the target property is one of these types and converts the rule's value automatically. You can keep writing rules with plain text and the plugin handles the rest.

Checkbox

IF property: status = "done"
THEN OVERWRITE property: completed = "true"

Result on disk: completed: true (boolean). Obsidian renders a checked checkbox.

Rules:

• "true" (any casing) → true
• Anything else ("false", empty, "sim", etc.) → false

Date / Datetime

IF property: status = "done"
THEN OVERWRITE property: created_at = "08-08-2025"

Result on disk: created_at: 2025-08-08 (ISO date). Obsidian renders the date widget.

How the date parsing works:

1. If your input is already in YYYY-MM-DD, it's stored as-is.
2. Otherwise, the plugin tries to parse it using the Daily Notes core plugin's date format (if enabled), then the Templates core plugin's date format (if enabled), then a few common civilian formats (DD-MM-YYYY, DD/MM/YYYY, YYYY/MM/DD).
3. The first format that parses successfully wins — the value is converted to YYYY-MM-DD before being written to the YAML.
4. If nothing parses (you typed garbage), the input is written as-is and the property won't render in the date widget. The plugin doesn't validate format beyond that — garbage in, garbage out.

Datetime properties (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss) are not parsed and are written exactly as typed. The Obsidian datetime widget will render them when the input is already in the expected ISO datetime form.

Notes

• This applies to both ADD value and OVERWRITE all values with actions on typed properties. For these types ADD behaves as OVERWRITE because the underlying types are scalar (you can't have a checkbox holding [true, false]).
• Properties without a registered type (or registered as text, number, multitext, tags, etc.) keep the original string-based behavior. Nothing changes for those.

Typed properties also work on the IF side (since v0.19.1)

The same type-aware coercion now happens when matching conditions, not just when writing actions. You can author IF rules using whatever date format you prefer and the plugin will normalize before comparing against the ISO value stored in YAML.

IF property: created_at exactly "08-08-2025"
THEN ...

matches a note whose YAML stores created_at: 2025-08-08. The same applies to contains and notContains. For checkbox properties, IF property: done exactly "true" matches a note with done: true (boolean) regardless of how the user typed true (case-insensitive).

Multiple Conditions Per Rule

Combine conditions inside a single rule using Match any / Match all of the following (inspired by Zotero).

AND example — match all of the following:

Match all of the following:
  - property: status = "done"
  - property: priority = "high"
THEN ADD tags: urgent-completed

OR example — match any of the following:

Match any of the following:
  - property: status = "archived"
  - property: deleted = "true"
THEN REMOVE tags: active

Click + Add condition below the IF block to add more conditions, and the dropdown to switch between any and all. Existing rules from previous plugin versions are auto-migrated and keep their behavior unchanged.

Multiple Actions Per Rule

Combine actions to automate complex workflows:

IF property: project_status = "completed"
THEN:
  - SET status [OVERWRITE]: done
  - ADD tags: archived
  - REMOVE tags: active, wip
  - ADD priority: low

Scan Scopes

Choose what to scan:

• Latest Created: Process newest notes (default: 15)
• Latest Modified: Process recently edited notes (default: 15)
• Entire Vault: Process all notes

Perfect for running rules only on active notes instead of your entire vault.

Operators Reference

Title Actions

Modify note titles dynamically:

• Prefix: [ARCHIVED] Original Title
• Suffix: Original Title - {date}
• Overwrite: Replace entire title with custom text

Placeholders

Placeholders work inside any THEN action value — property Add value / Overwrite all values with, and title Prefix / Suffix / Overwrite. They're expanded at the moment the rule runs, against the file being processed.

Property placeholders (v0.20.0)

Any token that isn't date / filename and doesn't contain : or whitespace is treated as a frontmatter property lookup. So {g_excerpt}, {summary}, {kebab-case-prop} all work.

Copy a value from one property to another:

IF property: g_excerpt exists
THEN ADD property excerpt: "{g_excerpt}"

Behavior:

• Missing property → empty string. No errors, no literal {name} left behind in your YAML.
• Arrays are joined with , . A source like tags: [a, b, c] becomes a, b, c in the expanded string.
• Earlier actions in the same rule are visible to later ones. The expansion reads from the in-progress frontmatter, so if action #1 sets excerpt, action #2 can reference {excerpt}.
• Reserved names win. {date} and {filename} are resolved first; a property literally named date or filename won't shadow them.

Combinations

Placeholders mix freely in the same value:

• {date:YYYY-MM-DD} - {filename} → 2026-01-08 - meeting-notes
• Meeting {filename} - {date:DD/MM/YY} → Meeting meeting-notes - 08/01/26
• {g_title} ({date:YYYY}) → My Post (2026)

Installation

From Community Plugins

1. Settings → Community Plugins → Browse
2. Search "Conditional Properties"
3. Install and enable

Manual Installation

1. Copy folder to .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-conditional-properties
2. Settings → Community Plugins → Enable "Conditional Properties"

Usage

Run Manually

• Settings: Conditional Properties → "Run now" button
• Command Palette: "Run conditional rules on vault"
• Current file: "Run conditional rules on current file"

Schedule Execution

Settings → Scan interval (minutes) → Set interval (minimum 5)

The plugin runs automatically based on your selected scope.

Roadmap

• IF/THEN rules engine
• 6 property operators
• Multiple actions per rule
• Title modifications with date placeholders
• Scheduled scans
• Scoped execution (latest/entire vault)
• Current file execution
• Property existence checks
• Rename property action
• Title overwrite with {filename} and {date:FORMAT} placeholders
• Multiple conditions per rule (match any / match all)
• Frontmatter property placeholders ({propertyName}) in action values
• Modify note content (beyond frontmatter)
• Advanced operators (regex, comparison)
• Nested condition groups (e.g. (A AND B) OR C)
• Folder/tag-based scoping

Privacy

All processing happens locally. No data collection, no external requests.

License

MIT