Daily note link 🔗 from a date property uses current date for date template instead of target date

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1

Steps to reproduce

  1. create a note named daily containing the template string {{date}}
  2. configure Daily Notes to use daily as the template
  3. create a new note named test
  4. add date property with the date 2055-04-01
  5. use the :link: to open that date as a daily note

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

yes!

Expected result

a new note 2055-04-01.md should be created with the text 2055-04-01.

Actual result

a new note 2055-04-01.md is created but the text is the current date (e.g. 2026-01-19 as of today)

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.11.5
Installer version: v1.7.7
Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 25.2.0: Tue Nov 18 21:09:41 PST 2025; root:xnu-12377.61.12~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6031 25.2.0
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: supporter
Insider build toggle: on
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: on
RECOMMENDATIONS:
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Additional information

2

I’m fairly certain when you trigger a template with {{date}} in it, it’s going to be today’s date (or whatever date your OS returns) no matter what.

I’d use {{title}} here instead:

Obsidian_Y0NysyvGVA

1 Like
3

I’m guess I’m surprised by this behavior in properties because when I use the Calendar plugin to create new daily note in the future, it does use the target date to populate templates.

Using {{title}} wouldn’t work for my actual use case unfortunately—I used {{date}} to simplify the repoduction, but my actual template is setting a property to {{date:gggg-[W]ww}}.

4

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Example of what I mean: the Calendar plugin does detect that I’m creating a note on a date in the future and completes the template as 2026-W06. If I clicked the link in a property for the same date, it fills the template with 2026-W04 which is unexpected to me.

Should this be a feature request instead of a bug?

5

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but the core Templates and Daily notes plugins don’t handle any date manipulations or date logic. They can be pointed to and execute a template with different formats (e.g. {{date:YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm}}), but that’s about it.

Periodic notes can do some some basic things like {{date+5d:MM-DD}}, Calendar can obviously handle some things, and Templater probably has the most options for date manipulation.

I’m not a member of the team, but this is a feature request in my view.

6

I’d really like to open a feature request for a {{target-date}} variable, alongside {{date}}. This way, daily notes plugin could populate the date property properly!