Yes it is, you just didnāt use MomentJS format like it mentions.
Nothing is double quoted at my end. If youāre using 1.4.x just remember that itās not ready yet and theyāre still fixing bugs.
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YYYY-MM-DD indeed works.
Itās only one tag actually. Iāll figure it out.
Cheers
Hi, Iāve tried implementing this but I am getting the following error message. Anybody know how to solve this?
I have opened a new fault in Obsidian and now the times do work. Anybody knows what the issue might be?
Excellent, this is what I was looking for. System mtime is changed each time my Dropbox synchronizes files between different machines, so itās frequently not reflecting actual time, while your plugin will update the modification time only when I actually edit the file.
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Glad to help 
I have no idea why the other two plugins which update a modified field use the file system time.
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Truth be told, when running normal or regex replacements from other programs (Notepadqq, for instance), I see the field updated ā but Obsidian was left open.
Slightly more concerning is this. Disabling these plugins seems to make this confounding issue stop.
- Wonder what is causing the interference here.
Now I use the manual way of Save [Contrl+S] with Linter (Lint current file with ālint on saveā), which updates date modified.
That makes perfect sense, because Obsidian is executing a ānote modifiedā event each time the note is modified.
Regarding the linked issue, if iCloud is constantly modifying notes in the background ā¦ that seems a little concerning 
I donāt have a Mac so canāt comment on that, but it doesnāt sound good.
In terms of updating frontmatter on modified, perhaps there is another event to hook into rather than the ānote modifiedā event. Iāll have a look.
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@gino_m I have updated the plugin to v1.1.0 with a new experimental update mode.
Instead of using Obsidianās built-in āfile has been modifiedā event, the new mode will watch for typing events in the editor view, and only update the frontmatter when actually typing occurs.
Can you please test this and see if it solves your use-case?
https://obsidian.md/plugins?id=frontmatter-modified-date
edit: I think you will need to restart Obsidian after changing that setting for it to work. I forgot to watch for the setting change and then re-register the plugin events.
I am curious about your opinion on what triggers the automatic merging issues (nothing to do with iCloud or sync) and how these changes effected by you will be an improvement?
No opinion - it is certain what is happening, itās even documented in my code.
- Obsidian has an event that fires when you update a file:
app.vault.on('modify') - Obsidian has a method to update a frontmatter field:
app.fileManager.processFrontMatter() - When you update the frontmatter through Obsidianās provided method while also typing, it causes an edit on the file which pops up the message ā<File> has been modified externally, merging changes automatically.ā
The changes I have just made are nothing to do with the above. The changes I made were for you to deal with your external modification of files - e.g. Notepadqq with Obsidian left open, or iCloud.
Thatās what I feared, Alan. The advantages of installing either of the two plugins far outweigh the disadvantages (data loss) ATM. Sorry.
Iām confused, why would there be any data loss? In fact I would go so far to say itās impossible, since Iām using Obsidianās built-in methods to update the frontmatter. If thereās any data loss it could only be due to an error in their own function, which seems very unlikely.
At the time of the message flashing up, people including me reported characters, lines missing. I linked the full thread.
It happened with the other modified date updater too, Alan.
The other modified date updater (and my plugin previously) used Obsidianās āfile modifiedā event to trigger updating the frontmatter. This event would be triggered by iCloud (apparently).
The new update mode does not use that event and will not be triggered by iCloud, only by you typing a keystroke.
Yeah but people reporting issues did not use iCloud. I use git too.
Also, how about this I wrote up a few days back?
I updated and reenabled the plugin and will be testing it.
Please let me know how it goes. It will solve the problem of stopping external processes from updating the frontmatter. It has no impact on any issues with Obsidianās own file merging (in that the plugin does things the ācorrectā Obsidian way, so it canāt be updated to be more correct).
Those issues are a question for the Obsidian devs, and well outside the scope of this plugin.
As a non-coder, I still understandā¦that something gets entangled in what needs to be weeded out in core code. I thought first it was about the every-two-second auto-save. Some parts of these processes get tangled upā¦but as I said, I am no coder.
As I am in the process of publishing important material online (challenging High Academia), I cannot lose face because of textual failures of any kind. I do etymology so every letter must be in place.
I expect 10-50 of my notes to be faulty at this point (not because of your plugin, of course).
The way my plugin works is that it waits until 10 seconds after all typing has stopped before it updates the frontmatter. This reduces the chances of any merge error message.
I did it this way purely because those error popups annoy me, rather than attempting to solve a merge issue.
Another solution for the issue youāre experiencing is to increase that timeout. For example if you set it to be 2 minutes after the last typing occurred before updating the frontmatter, it seems very likely that there wonāt be any merge conflict.
See how the v1.1.0 update goes, and if still no luck we can add a configurable timeout length.