Property filters

The Properties navigation section turns a small set of frontmatter keys into browsable facets. It is intentionally empty until you choose which properties matter, so a large vault does not become a wall of metadata.

Choose visible properties

Right-click the Properties header and choose Choose visible properties. Search the vault-wide list, enable the keys you want, and select Done. Newly enabled keys open immediately to show the values found in the current card source.

The documentation vault includes a small workflow property with the values capture, gather, organize, and reframe, which makes a useful first example after Getting started.

Filter by values

Click a value to make it the only active property filter. Click it again when it is the sole active value to clear the filter. Ctrl-click on Windows/Linux, Cmd-click on macOS, or press Space to add or remove values without replacing the rest.

• Values inside one property use OR: workflow = gather OR organize.
• Different properties use AND: workflow = gather AND status = active.
• Unassigned matches notes without a supported value for that key.

Activating a non-empty property filter clears the current tag filters, and activating a tag filter clears property filters. Ctrl/Cmd-click or Space still adds values and other property conditions within property filtering. Use card-box rules to preserve tag and property views.

Text, finite numbers, booleans, and arrays containing those scalar values are supported. Keys come only from top-level Markdown frontmatter; nested objects are not expanded into dotted properties. Non-Markdown cards have no property values and therefore match only an active Unassigned choice.

Group by a property

1. Enable a key such as status in Choose visible properties.
2. Open Sort & group → Group by → Property on the toolbar and choose that key.
3. Cards form groups by the complete set of values. For example, status: [draft, review] and status: draft form different groups; array order does not affect membership.

Headers show the property name, values, and card count. Text, numbers, and booleans keep their type distinctions; cards without supported values enter Unassigned.

Property grouping works in folder, card-box, and linked-note sources, including linked-note sources where property filters are paused. Hiding a property used for grouping resets the affected global or card-box arrangement to None.

Right-click a property name to sort its values by Name (A to Z), Name (Z to A), or Manual sorting. Unassigned stays last. The Properties header sorts the property names themselves. See Arrange folders, tags, and properties.

Counts and navigation search

Property facets are calculated from the unfiltered source, so choosing one value does not erase its siblings. Turn on navigation counts in Settings to show how many source cards contribute to each key and value.

Filter navigation… matches both enabled property names and their displayed values. A matching value temporarily expands its property, making it useful in a longer property list.

Availability by source

Property filters work in folder and card-box sources. In a box they only narrow what you see; the box’s rules, members, and member count stay the same. The conditions stay in place when you switch between folders and boxes.

In linked-note sources, property clauses stay dormant, show a paused-filter hint, and resume when you return to a folder or box.

A card box’s membership rules can also include property clauses; those rules decide its members rather than acting as a temporary browse filter. When you save or add a folder view to a box, its active property clauses become part of the new rule together with the folder and tags.

Creating a note with New writes the active text, number, or boolean property filters into the new note’s frontmatter. If several values of one property are selected, the first value in navigation order is used.

Right-click the Properties header to clear all property filters. Hiding a property also removes its expansion state and active browse clauses, and clears grouping by that key. Property conditions in card-box membership rules remain intact.