Hi, it would be nice to be able to hide properties in reading view as I just use it to put css tags in the properties and then it shows up );
Solution
Make one of the ‘Properties in document’ setting options ‘Show in edit view’.
8 Likes
An option for now is to hide it with a CSS snippet:
/* hide properties view in reading view/mode */
body {
--metadata-display-reading: none;
}
3 Likes
Hi there!
A made some workaround which can let you disable and enable the display of this section on those notes on which it is needed. Here is a post explaining how to do it
Under Settings > Display > Properties in document, set it to Hidden. It will display only in edit mode, but doesn’t work together with Live Preview.
If you don’t use Live Preview, then this should solve your problem.
That said, I 100% hate the new Properties stuff. It re-formats the frontmatter from my templates and removes any hidden text. The way I use frontmatter is to have several common options after a #, making it easy to copy into the appropriate field without having to type anything.
2 Likes
I really want this to be reverted in some way. A settings option to not display properties in the notes would be grand. I cannot stand the properties being displayed in the notes.
The workaround with the css-snippet is only so good. There is still a large gap at the top compared to before.
I beg you to provide an option to hide all properties.
4 Likes
Just imagine if browsers forced you to see all meta data for each page whether you needed to “easily manage” it or not. We should def. have an option to either complete hide this, or better yet, there should be a “manage properties” option that when uncheck operates like it did before without any of the properties-related functionality. Obsidian feels like it’s making it product needlessly complicated and now it’s getting in its own way. This feature feels like scope creep or an unchecked “wouldn’t it be cool if…”
5 Likes
There is a command named “Toggle fold properties in current file” which can be bound to a hotkey. The state is persisted across desktop invocations but isn’t carried over to mobile. It does leave a visible “Properties” Toggle button:
It’s so weird to me that Obsidian doesn’t see this as an obvious optional setting and frustrating that they’re still ignoring the clearly-worded requests here after many months.
1 Like
I’ve been using Obsidian for a couple years now, and it seems that it has gradually been moving towards a user experience that conflicts with the power of a plain text format, such as Markdown, leaning heavily towards a mouse-centric, presentation-over-data philosophy.
The new Properties system is one of many major steps that I just cannot agree with.
-
The inability to completely hide properties in reading view, without a gap of some sort, or a foldable section. I wouldn’t want to see the
<meta>contents of an HTML page this way. Let me switch to source view to see that. -
The new Properties types are nice and all, but are geared towards users that don’t treat text as data, and data as text. There is no YAML annotations when changing a Text property to a Date property, and for those of us that wish to use the keyboard to input data, that poses a bit of a problem, especially when using Templates/Templater, and nested frontmatter. If I can understand the intent better, as well as edit more effiectively/efficiently (albeit with less core features) in editing view, with or without live-preview, with zero parsing into a presentable form as per reading view, I think that says a lot.
In summary, there is not enough control to use this application for complex data relationships without resorting to modifying the application yourself with JavaScript, if the classes and API even allow for what you want to achieve.
While I do enjoy the benefits Obsidian brings over my previous many years of Vimwiki or Orgmode, both of which only require their respective editor – command-line or GUI… or even some lesser-known, but more plain-text oriented reference tracking systems, as these aforementioned gradual changes are integrated, I am gradually seeing myself going back to these simpler systems that, at the end of the day, get the job done, without my fingers leaving the keyboard, or even having a graphical session available.
Disclaimer: I use Obsidian different than most people, so they may have vastly different opinions. These are just my thoughts after using it for some time, and understanding the priorities of development.
For example, I do not use tags for any permanent matter: See What's better: Tags at the end of text or tags in front matter? - #4 by holroy, as an example of why frontmatter should be highly structured and annotated (most tags are temporal during organization).