Properties & Tags

Add structured metadata to notes with custom properties and free-form tags.

Use Add property or Add tag above the note title to attach metadata before you start writing.

Tags Row

A row under the title shows the note's free-form labels.

• Click the tag area to add a tag
• Comma or space confirms
• Tags are global — the same tag on two notes is the same tag
• Tags keep the capitalization you type (#Work stays #Work), but identity is case-insensitive: #Work and #work are the same tag with one color and one combined count. This also applies to imported notes — an Obsidian vault's tag casing survives the import.
• Typing #tag in the body of a note or journal entry adds the tag to the row and shows it as a colored chip in the text. The chip is saved as plain #tag in the file and comes back as a chip when you reopen the note. A #tag inside inline code stays literal text, and one inside bold or italic text keeps its formatting and shows as text.

Tags appear in the sidebar Tags section, grouped by category (see Tag Categories below). Click any tag — in the sidebar, on a note, or in the tag hub — to open its own tab: the same Folder View, scoped to that tag, listing every note, task, and inbox item that carries it. Filter by kind (notes / tasks / inbox) alongside any other property. See Capturing Tasks for tagging tasks.

The tag itself shows as a locked tag = <name> filter chip — it defines the view and can't be removed, unlike every other filter you add. The tag page includes nested tags: opening work also lists items tagged work/urgent. (The task filter bar matches exactly, so filtering tasks on work there won't include work/urgent.)

A tag's saved views (columns, sort, group, filters) are scoped to that tag — a "By status" view saved on work doesn't show up on personal — and sync to your other devices along with the tag itself. See Saved Views.

Renaming or Deleting Tags

Manage tags globally from Settings → Tags, or open a tag's own page and use its header menu to rename, recolor, or delete it directly. Renames apply across every note instantly.

Renaming or deleting a tag currently updates your notes only — tasks keep the original tag, so a task tagged MIT stays MIT even after you rename that tag. Merging two tags does carry across tasks. To retag a task directly, edit it in the task detail drawer.

Tag Icons

Give any tag a custom icon to tell it apart at a glance. In Settings → Tags, click the icon next to a tag name and pick an emoji or icon (or clear it to fall back to the default). The icon is stored on the tag and syncs across your devices.

You can also set a tag's icon straight from its own page: click the chip in the page header. Once set, the icon shows everywhere the tag appears — the sidebar tag list, the tag chips on a note or journal entry, and inline #tags in the editor.

Tag Categories

Group related tags together and give the sidebar a stable, deliberate order. Open the tag hub to manage categories and tags in one place — either from the grid icon next to the sidebar's Tags section header, or by picking Tags in the create menu (the chevron beside the sidebar's New button, and the + on the tab bar).

• New category — click New category, name it, press Enter.
• New tag — click New tag in the hub, name it, and pick a starting color. (You can still create a tag the usual way, by typing #tag on a note or in the tags row — this is just a second entry point that lets you place it in a category up front.) The tag appears in the hub straight away with a count of 0 and stays there until you use it, so you can lay out a set of tags before writing anything. It keeps the capitalisation you typed — Reading stays Reading — and because tag names ignore case, typing reading afterwards reopens the same tag rather than making a second one. Until a note or task uses it, an empty tag shows in the hub, in tag pickers, and in the editor's # autocomplete, but not in the sidebar's Tags section, which lists the tags actually in use.
• Rename or delete a category — hover its heading for the pencil and trash icons. Deleting a category does not delete its tags; they fall back to Uncategorized.
• Reorder — drag a category to reorder categories, or drag a tag chip between or within categories to change its category and its position at the same time.
• Search — the hub's search box filters both category and tag names as you type.

The sidebar's Tags section mirrors the hub's categories and order. Its sort control defaults to Manual (the hub's drag order), with Most used, Least used, A → Z, and Z → A as alternatives. A tag with no category — or one whose category was deleted on another device before this one synced — shows under Uncategorized rather than disappearing.

Categories and each tag's category/position sync across your devices like everything else in the vault.

Properties Panel

A collapsible section under the title for structured metadata. Properties are typed and reusable.

Property Types

Type	Use for	Example
Text	Free-form short strings	"Author"
Number	Numeric values	"Pages"
Date	Dates and date ranges	"Started", "Due"
Select	One value from a defined set	"Status: Draft / Live"
Multi-select	Many values from a defined set	"Topics: Coding, Health"
Checkbox	Boolean	"Archived"
Status	Workflow stage with color	"Todo / In progress / Done"
Relation	Links to notes, tasks, events, canvases, or journal entries	"Related to: Project Kickoff"
Project	Link to one or more projects	"Project: Website Redesign"

Defining Properties

Open Settings → Properties to create, rename, recolor, or reorder property definitions and their options.

A property definition is reused across every note that adopts it — adding a Topics multi-select once means every note has access to the same vocabulary.

Option names are unique within a property. Adding an option whose name already exists keeps the existing one, including its color, rather than creating a second entry.

A status property you have not customized yet shows the built-in Todo / In progress / Done set. The first option you add to it saves that set alongside your new option, so what the picker shows and what the vault stores stay the same.

Property definitions sync across your devices. A select you define on the desktop reaches your other desktop and your phone with its type and its option colors intact, so the same value shows the same colored chip everywhere. A value that no longer matches any option — an option renamed on another device before this note synced — still renders, in gray, rather than disappearing.

Adding a Property to a Note

In the property panel, click Add property and pick from the list. Set the value inline.

For a Date property, clicking the value opens a calendar pop-up — pick a day, or type the date directly. Dates display in the format chosen at Settings → General → Date Format.

Showing Dates on the Calendar

A Date property can surface its value on the calendar. On a date property's row, click the calendar icon to turn on Show on calendar — the icon stays tinted while it's on, so you can see the state at a glance. The note then appears as an all-day chip on that date, and clicking the chip opens the note. The setting is vault-wide per property name and syncs across your devices.

Relation Properties

A Relation property points to one or more notes, tasks, events, canvases, or journal entries. Each value renders as a chip showing the target's title and an icon for its kind. Clicking a chip opens its target — a journal chip opens the journal on that entry's date, and a canvas chip opens that canvas. Titles are resolved live, so renaming a target updates every chip pointing at it.

Use the relation picker to search and add targets, and to remove existing ones. A target that's been deleted still shows its chip, dimmed, so the reference isn't silently dropped.

Relation properties also feed the Backlinks panel and Graph view on the note(s) they point to, alongside wiki links — so a relation and a [[wiki link]] to the same note both show up as connections.

Project Property

A note or journal entry joins a project through its project property, not a menu. Choose Add property → Project to create the row; only one project property is allowed per note, so once it's added, that entry in the Add property list is disabled.

• Value — a list of project names, picked from a dropdown. Each choice shows the project's color and icon; archived projects still resolve to their real appearance there, they just don't appear in the picker for new links. A name that matches no project (a typo, or a project deleted on another device before this note synced) still renders, muted, rather than being silently dropped.

• Remove — click the × on a chip.

• Storage — the value lives in the note's frontmatter as a plain list of project names, so it's visible and editable in a plain markdown editor and travels with the file. memrynote writes it as a top-level property:

  ---
  project:
    - Website Redesign
  ---

  Existing notes with a nested properties: block are migrated to top-level keys when the vault opens. If both locations contain a key, the top-level value wins. Frontmatter is the source of truth; the project hub reflects it, not the other way around.

• Renaming or deleting a project rewrites the project value in every linked note's frontmatter — a rename updates the name in place, a delete removes it from the list.

• Dragging a note or journal entry onto a project in the sidebar sets this same property.

• Tasks written in the note follow it. A task you create inside the note is filed in the note's project — see Capturing Tasks. When you give the note a project from this row and the note already holds tasks filed elsewhere, memrynote asks once whether to move them across; declining leaves them where they are.

• In a folder view column, each project shows as a pill with the project's color and icon; clicking one opens that project's page, the way clicking a tag opens its tag page. The cell is read-only there — a project value is a list of project names, so editing it as free text in a table would point the note at a project that doesn't exist. Add, remove, and rename projects from the note's property row or the project itself.

First open after upgrading

Notes that were already linked to a project before this property existed get that link written into their frontmatter once, the first time you open the vault. Those notes are saved in the same pass, so their frontmatter is normalised the way any memrynote save normalises it: tags written inline in the note body are lifted into the tags: list, and tag capitalisation follows what memrynote has indexed. Nothing is removed, and the note body is untouched.

Files and calendar events have no frontmatter, so they keep their own Add to project action instead of a property — see Projects.

Tags vs Properties — When to Use Which

Need	Use
Quick free-form labels you don't pre-define	Tags
A controlled vocabulary across many notes	Multi-select property
A single workflow state per note	Status property
A date or numeric value	Typed property

Tags are zero-cost and discoverable. Properties are structured and great for filtering Folder View.

Filtering and Discovery

• Sidebar tag list or tag hub — click any tag to open its page
• Folder view columns — show any property as a sortable column
• Search palette — type #tag to filter results by tag

Narrowing a tag page to several tags

A tag page starts on one tag. To see only the items that carry every tag you care about, Ctrl-click (Windows, Linux) or Cmd-click (macOS) further tags in the sidebar while that page is open. Each additional tag narrows the result; the page does not navigate away, and a plain click still just opens the tag it was clicked on.

The tags currently narrowing the page are listed above the table. Remove one with the x on its chip, or use Clear all to drop back to the single tag the page opened on. A tag also matches its / children here — selecting project keeps items tagged project/alpha — exactly as a single-tag page always has.

Save search names the current combination. Saved searches are stored with the vault, not in one window, so they survive a restart; reopen one from the Saved searches menu on the same bar to get the identical filter back. Existing vaults simply start with no saved searches.

Where Tags Show Up

• Tags row on each note
• Sidebar Tags section (grouped by category, with usage counts)
• The tag hub (organize categories) and each tag's own page (everything tagged with it)
• Wiki link autocomplete ([[#tag]])
• Search (#tag filter)

Storage

Tags and property values live in the data DB, alongside tag categories and each tag's category/sort order. Tag indexes and link graphs are mirrored into the index DB for fast lookups.

In the vault's markdown files, a note's frontmatter contains only your own properties (plus tags and aliases). MemryNote keeps its internal bookkeeping — the note id and created/modified dates — in the local database and never writes its own keys into your files; a note with no properties has no frontmatter block at all.

Frontmatter in your .md files is treated as yours: memrynote re-emits the original block byte-for-byte (comments, key order, and quoting included) unless you actually edit a property, tag, or alias in the app. Saving a note without changing anything writes nothing to disk at all.

A #tag in the body stays in the body

A tag written inline in a note's text is indexed like any other — it shows in the sidebar, in search, and on the tag's own page — but opening that note does not lift it into the tags: frontmatter. The file is left exactly as you wrote it, which matters if you keep your tags in the body the way an Obsidian vault often does.

Adding or removing an inline tag while editing still updates the note's tags, as it always has. Only opening a note is now a read.

Body tags hold up across devices too. A note's tags sync as its tags: frontmatter, so a tag that lives only in the body isn't part of what travels — each device reads it back out of the note's own text instead, and a note edited elsewhere keeps its inline tags here rather than dropping out of the sidebar and tag search until the vault is re-indexed. Nothing is written into your frontmatter to make that work.

TIP

Notes that already had a tags: block added by an earlier version keep it. An injected block is indistinguishable from one you wrote yourself, so nothing tries to unpick it — delete the block by hand if you would rather the tag lived only in the body.

If a note's frontmatter isn't valid YAML — an unterminated quote, an unclosed list — the note is still indexed. Its text stays searchable and its links still show up in the graph; only its properties, tags, and aliases are unavailable until the YAML is fixed. The broken block is left on disk untouched, so you can repair it in memrynote or any other editor.