Property Icons

English | 中文

Show badge icons before file names in Obsidian's file explorer, driven by note property (frontmatter) rules.

Your notes already carry their status in properties — publish_status: done, publish_platform: wechat, priority: high. Property Icons turns those into small icons in the file list, so you can see state at a glance without opening anything.

Features

• Rule groups — create any number of rule groups. Each group is a set of property = value (exact) or property contains value (substring; arrays match by any element) conditions.
• AND / OR per group — choose whether all conditions must match (AND) or any (OR). One operator per group, kept simple.
• Multiple icons — a file that matches several groups shows several badges, in order.
• Built-in brand icons — bilibili, 小红书 (Xiaohongshu), YouTube, 抖音 (Douyin), 快手 (Kuaishou), 微博 (Weibo), 知乎 (Zhihu), WeChat, X, Reddit, Instagram.
• Custom icons — upload your own image (jpg / jpeg / png / svg) and use it as a badge.
• Import / export — save all rule groups, custom icons and the icon size to one JSON file, and import it on another device to use the same setup (desktop only).
• Live — badges update instantly when a note's properties change, and survive file-tree scrolling/expanding.

Usage

1. Enable the plugin, open Settings → Property Icons.
2. Click + in the Rule groups list — the new group opens in an edit dialog.
3. Add one or more conditions (e.g. property publish_status, value done), pick 且/或 (AND/OR), and choose an icon. Reorder or delete groups from the list; the duplicate button on a row creates a copy right below it and opens it for editing, so a similar rule is only a tweak away.
4. Notes whose frontmatter matches now show the icon before their name in the file explorer.

Example — show the WeChat icon on notes synced to a WeChat draft:

---
publish_platform: wechat
publish_status: done
---

Rule: publish_platform = wechat AND publish_status = done → WeChat icon.

Notes on matching

• Conditions use exact string equality (status: done matches value done).
• If a property is a list (e.g. tags: [a, b]), the condition matches when any element equals the value.

Trademark notice

The built-in icons are simplified, brand-colored glyphs created for this plugin to help you distinguish platforms at small sizes — they are not the official logos. All platform names and logos are trademarks of their respective owners, and their inclusion here does not imply any affiliation or endorsement. If you need an exact official logo, use the custom icon upload feature.

Acknowledgements

This plugin was inspired by Mark as Read / Explorer Property Attributes by Maksim Volkov (@hemy301) — the idea of surfacing note properties directly in the file explorer comes from his work. Property Icons is an independent implementation with its own rule-group engine and icon system, but it owes the original spark to that project. Thank you.

Changelog

• v0.2.4 (2026-11-12)
  • The export file name no longer uses moment() for its date, which the community directory code scan flagged; no change in behavior.
• v0.2.3 (2026-11-12)
  • New built-in icon for Reddit.
• v0.2.2 (2026-11-11)
  • Export / import at the bottom of the settings tab (desktop only): export writes one JSON file with all rule groups, custom icons and the icon size; import replaces the current settings as a whole, asks for confirmation when rule groups or custom icons already exist, and rejects an invalid file with the reason, changing nothing.
  • Duplicate button on each row of the rule group list: the copy is placed right below the original and opens for editing.
  • New built-in icons for 快手 (Kuaishou) and 知乎 (Zhihu); the X icon is now the current logo, drawn in the theme text color.
  • Fixed on Obsidian 1.15, where settings open in their own window: the + button for uploading a custom icon did nothing, and the description texts on the settings tab were not shown.
  • The edit dialog no longer jumps back to the top after adding / deleting a condition or picking an icon when it is tall enough to scroll; default names of new rule groups no longer collide with existing ones.
• v0.2.0 (2026-09-07): settings tab migrated to the Obsidian 1.13 declarative Settings API (getSettingDefinitions); rule groups are edited in a dialog and can be reordered by drag. Requires Obsidian ≥ 1.13.0.
• v0.1.x: initial releases (Obsidian ≥ 1.4.0).

License

MIT