Nested Properties

YAML frontmatter nests, but Obsidian's Properties editor does not. Give a note a nested structure and the panel shows you nothing useful — the values are there in the file, and the only way to read or change them is to edit the raw YAML by hand and hope you get the indentation right.

This plugin renders nested objects and arrays as a collapsible tree in the Properties panel, where you can read them, edit them, change their types, and rename or delete a nested key across the whole vault.

---
level1simple: simple1
level1Nested:
  level2simple: simple2
  level2Nested:
    level3simple: simple3
    level3Nested:
      level4simple: simple4
      level4Nested:
        level5simple: simple5
---

Inspired by this feature request.

More screenshots

Demo vault

The documentation is a demo vault. Every feature has a note whose own frontmatter demonstrates it — open the note, look at the Properties panel, and you are looking at the feature.

Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.

A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Nested Properties: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading nested-properties-demo-vault.zip from the Releases. It unzips into a single nested-properties-demo-vault-<version> folder.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

What it does

• Nested objects and arrays as a tree in the Properties panel, collapsible to any depth. 01 Nested objects · 02 Nested arrays · 05 Deeply nested and scrolling
• Mixed and complex shapes — lists holding different types, and arrays of objects. 03 Mixed lists · 04 Array of objects
• Edit in place — add, remove and reorder entries from the context menu, and change a nested property's type without rewriting the YAML. 06 Context menu actions · 07 Changing property types
• Rename or delete a nested key across the whole vault, not just in the note you are looking at. 09 Vault-wide rename and delete
• Find them — search nested properties the way you search anything else. 10 Search nested properties
• See the full key of a nested entry when the short name is ambiguous. 08 Full key display
• Read it without opening it — a collapsed property shows a one-line preview of its content, and you can choose how many levels arrive expanded, vault-wide or per note. 11 Initial expand level

Initial expand level

A nested property arrives collapsed by default, and a collapsed row is readable on its own: it shows a one-line preview of its content rather than an opaque { ... }, with any complex value inside it elided so the row stays one line tall.

If you would rather some of it arrived already open, set Settings → Nested Properties → Initial expand level — 1 opens the nested property but not its children, 2 opens the children too, and so on. An array index counts as a level of its own, so in generated.foo.0 the array item sits one level below generated.foo.

A note can override the setting for itself:

---
nestedProperties:
  initialExpandLevel: 2
---

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin are hidden.

To show them, run the following command in the DevTools Console:

window.DEBUG.enable('nested-properties');

For more details, refer to the documentation.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.

Support

My other Obsidian resources

See my other Obsidian resources.

License

© Michael Naumov