Adding a property to a template containing a {{date}} property breaks it

Bug graveyard
,
1

Steps to reproduce

I have a template which sets the “created” property to today’s date. It works as expected:

---
categories:
  - "[[Notes]]"
topics:
created: {{date}}
---
# Title

If I add a property to this template using the “Add property” button:

image
image715×282 9.65 KB

Did you follow the troubleshooting guide? [Y/N]

Yes

Expected result

the updated markdown should look like this:

---
categories:
  - "[[Notes]]"
topics:
created: {{ date }}
url:
---
# Title

Actual result

the “created” property is updated and becomes a list, and changing the {{date}} to { date }, which doesn’t work as expected anymore:

---
categories:
  - "[[Notes]]"
topics:
created:
  "{ date }":
url:
---
# Title

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: v1.9.14
	Installer version: v1.7.7
	Operating system: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.153-1 (2025-09-20) 6.1.0-40-amd64
	Login status: logged in
	Language: en
	Catalyst license: insider
	Insider build toggle: off
	Live preview: on
	Base theme: adapt to system
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 0
	Restricted mode: on

RECOMMENDATIONS:
	none

Additional information

2

This is because the curly brackets used by Obsidian’s template tag syntax also have meaning in YAML (the language properties are written in).

As a workaround, if you need to update the template and prefer to use the properties editor, you can either temporarily remove the template tags or use source mode to temporarily wrap them in quote marks.

3

Thanks for the clarification and the confirmation. So there’s currently no clean way to set a default date in a template property while still being able to use the property editor. The workaround you mentioned is what I usually end up doing to tidy things up, but it does feel a bit sub-optimal.

4
1 Like