2. The Issue: The visual “Properties” editor in Live Preview fails to save values for any property that uses a list of choices (e.g., status: A | B | C ). When a user selects an option from the pop-up menu and tries to confirm it (either by pressing Enter or clicking away), the value does not save and the UI reverts to its unconfirmed state. This bug makes it impossible to use the visual selection feature for properties.
3. Steps to Reproduce:
Create a new note.
Switch to Source Mode .
Add the following text to the very top of the note:--- test_status: A | B | C ---
Switch back to Live Preview mode.
In the rendered Properties UI, click on the test_status property, select an option from the menu (e.g., “B”), and then click away into the main note area.
Observed Result: The property fails to update and does not save the selection.
4. Comprehensive Troubleshooting Steps Performed: The following steps were taken to diagnose the issue, and the bug persisted through all of them, indicating a core application problem:
Confirmed it is not a plugin/theme issue: The bug occurs even when Obsidian is in Restricted Mode .
Confirmed it is not a temporary glitch: The bug persists after a full application restart and after using the View > Force Reload command.
Confirmed it is not a settings issue: The setting at Settings > Editor > “Properties in document” is correctly set to “Visible” . Toggling this setting did not fix the issue.
Confirmed it is not a syntax issue: The bug occurs with correctly formatted YAML frontmatter. When the frontmatter is missing the --- delimiters, it correctly displays as plain text. When the delimiters are added, it renders the buggy property UI.
Confirmed the bug is systemic: The issue was reproduced with multiple different properties (influence_level ,supported_by , and the test_status example), proving it affects any property using the selection list feature.
Confirmed a likely caching problem: Even after editing the template file in Source Mode to remove the selection options (e.g., changing influence_level: high | medium | low to just influence_level: ),creating a new note from that template still resulted in the old selection options appearing in the pop-up menu,indicating the options are being incorrectly cached somewhere in the application’s state.
The only reliable method to set these property values is to edit them manually in Source Mode .
Looking at Obsidian’s documentation on Properties format …
… I think you might just have malformed lists …
I mean, if you look at the key cast from the example in the documentation, it’s written in Source Mode/YAML as a bulleted list :
---
title: A New Hope # This is a text property
year: 1977
favorite: true
cast: # This is a list property
- Mark Hamill
- Harrison Ford
- Carrie Fisher
---
So I guess, your test_status key should be written as:
Thank you for the suggestion. To clarify, my goal is not to create a List Property that holds multiple values at once.
My goal is to create a Text Property that holds a single value, but where the UI provides a list of suggestions to choose from (using the key: option1 | option2 syntax).
The bug I am experiencing is that when I use this correct syntax for a single-choice suggestion, the UI does not save the selected value. The issue seems to be specific to this feature.
I’m definitively confused by the use-case here (sorry )…
But I can say that using the beta/catalyst release of Obsidian (on MacOS Sequoia), I don’t seem to have issues with:
---
test_status: A | B | C
---
… being saved in a text type of key (as written)… but I can’t also absolutely not pick just B from the suggestions in Properties in Live Preview …
(all I can do is select the whole A | B | C in the suggestions (which is maybe you goal )
You have perfectly described the bug I am experiencing. The fact that you also cannot pick just ‘B’ from the suggestions proves that the issue is not just on my machine.
To clarify the use case, the official Obsidian documentation shows that using the | symbol is supposed to create a single-choice selection menu, allowing a user to pick just one option (like “B”). The bug is that this feature is not working correctly.
The fact that you’ve reproduced this on a beta version is strong evidence for the developers that this is a core bug that needs to be addressed.
That is a fair question, I apologize again for the confusion my previous responses
The information about using the | pipe character to create selection lists in properties came from the AI.
As i understand it the | syntax is a method within the Obsidian community for this purpose.
My error was confidently stating that this information was on the specific documentation page you were referred to, without first verifying that the page was up-to-date. I should have stated that it is a known feature within the community
Other users on the forum tested this feature, it did not work correctly.
Thank you so much for taking the time and this would indeed achieve what I’m trying to do here. I’m just not able to see the options pop-up when I click on that particular field. Here are the steps that I talk to test it out
Here are the precise steps I took:
I created a simplified template where the influence_level: property was completely blank.
I created three separate “seed” notes. Each note contained only one of the values (i.e., influence_level: high in the first note, influence_level: medium in the second, and influence_level: low in the third).
I then completely quit and restarted the Obsidian application to ensure the vault was re-indexed.
Finally, I created a new note from the template and, in Live Preview, clicked on the blank influence_levelproperty.
Result: Unfortunately, the suggestion menu did not appear. The field remained blank and did not show the “high,” “medium,” and “low” options.
Can you try in the Sandbox vault to see what happens there? There’s also the troubleshooting guide to see if it’s a community plugin, theme, etc., causing the issue.
If an AI tells you about an app feature, and the thing the AI has told you doesn’t work, assume the AI is wrong. If the AI cites a help page for the wrong information, read the help page yourself.
When you ask for help here, feel free to mention that you have asked AI and that it didn’t work, but don’t ask for help with the AI’s wrong output. The ways it is wrong aren’t likely to be worth troubleshooting. Ask your original question, the one you asked the AI for help with.
Do not ask our community for help with unverified AI output. It wastes our volunteers’ time (and yours).
…
(sorry 
)…
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