What's new in 1.9.0

MetaEdit 1.9.0 is the biggest release in years. Property editing now happens through Obsidian’s own property widgets, new properties are created in one fluid, type-aware modal, and you can edit metadata across a whole folder in one pass. Auto Properties grew multi-select, descriptions, and learn-as-you-go values. Underneath it all, five months of hardening make every write safer than it has ever been.

Edit properties with Obsidian’s native widgets

Pick a property from the property picker and you now get the exact widget Obsidian’s Properties panel would give you: a date picker for dates, a checkbox for booleans, chips for lists, a number field for numbers. No more retyping structured values as free text - types are respected end to end, so rating stays a number and started stays a real date, both in the editor and in the file.

Create properties fluidly - types included

New YAML property opens a single row that behaves like Obsidian’s own property editor:

The key input autocompletes from every property name in your vault.
The value widget follows the type: type a known key like rating and the row switches to the number widget on its own; finished mounts a date picker.
Type a value that looks like a date or number under the wrong type, and MetaEdit offers a one-click “Change to Date/Number” switch.
Keyboard-first: ⌘/Ctrl+Y opens the type menu, ⌘/Ctrl+↵ adds the property.

Keys with an Auto Property hand you off to its value prompt, and tags/aliases lock to their reserved types so you can’t create malformed frontmatter. Full details in Create new properties.

Bulk edit metadata across folders and selections

Bulk edit: right-clicking a folder, naming the property and value, then choosing a conflict policy

Right-click any folder and choose “Bulk edit metadata in this folder (and subfolders)”, or multi-select notes in the file explorer and choose “Bulk edit metadata in selected notes”. Name a property, give it a value, and if some notes already define it, choose exactly what happens:

Skip notes that already have it - nothing is overwritten,
Merge into a list - without duplicating, or
Overwrite existing values - behind an explicit confirmation, because bulk edits can’t be undone with Ctrl+Z.

A summary notice reports what changed. Every write goes through MetaEdit’s serialized write queue, so a bulk run can’t race your other edits. See Bulk edit metadata across notes.

Auto Properties leveled up

A Multi-type Auto Property prompt: description text, checkbox multi-select, a “new” badge on values not yet in the list, and the “Also add new values” checkbox

Auto Properties - predefined value lists for properties you edit often - learned some serious new tricks:

Multi-select: mark an Auto Property as Multi and pick several values with checkboxes; they’re written as a proper YAML list.
Descriptions: add an optional note that shows up in the value prompt, so future-you remembers what the property means.
Learn as you go: type a value that isn’t in the list to use it once, or save it into the choices right from the prompt - no trip to settings.
Paste a list: paste comma- or newline-separated values into a choice field in settings and it splits into one choice per entry.

Everything is covered in Auto Properties: reusable value sets.

Smarter value entry everywhere

Text prompts now autocomplete from your vault: property values are suggested ranked by how often you already use them, and tag edits suggest your existing tags. Date- and datetime-typed properties get a native picker instead of a bare text box.

Every YAML/Dataview row has native, tooltipped actions: “Delete property”, or “Transform to YAML ⇄ Dataview”, right from the list. See Delete and transform properties.
Hide file tags from the picker (Settings -> “Edit Meta menu”) when you only care about frontmatter and inline fields - a frontmatter tags: property stays editable.
Hide specific properties by name via the same filtering settings.
Nested YAML shows up as individual child rows, so structured frontmatter is no longer a wall of text.

Tags are edited where they live

Tag editing was rebuilt for correctness: rename a body #tag occurrence in place, or edit a frontmatter tags: list as a real list - MetaEdit strips stray # prefixes, accepts single values or comma/space-separated strings, and removes the key when you clear the last tag. Because body tags could not be deleted or transformed safely, those two actions were removed for body tags; “Rename tag” and “Edit last segment” stay. Vault-wide renames remain Obsidian’s Tag pane territory. See Edit tags.

For plugin developers and Templater users

The public API (app.plugins.plugins["metaedit"].api) grew a lot this cycle:

const api = app.plugins.plugins["metaedit"].api;

// Nested YAML paths - read, update, or create-with-parents
await api.addOrUpdateYamlPath("book.progress.page", 217, file);
const page = await api.getYamlPath("book.progress.page", file);

// Append a NEW inline Dataview field instance (never replaces existing ones),
// with control over where it lands
await api.appendDataviewField("review", "pending", file, { location: "end" });

// Read every property in a file - YAML (incl. nested), inline fields, tags
const props = await api.getPropertiesInFile(file);

// Manage Auto Properties programmatically
const autoProps = api.getAutoProperties();
await api.setAutoProperties([...autoProps, { name: "mood", choices: ["good", "neutral", "bad"] }]);

// Subscribe to real metadata changes (no-op edits are filtered out)
const unsubscribe = api.onMetadataChange(({ file, properties, previousProperties }) => {
  console.log(`${file.path} metadata changed`);
});

New in 1.9.0:

getYamlPath / updateYamlPath / addOrUpdateYamlPath - nested paths with a.b[0].c syntax
appendDataviewField with insert-location options and getPropertiesInFile - reading and writing properties
getAutoProperties / setAutoProperties - the Auto Properties API
onMetadataChange - the metadata change subscription

Reliability roundup

A lot of this release is invisible: it’s the writes that don’t go wrong anymore.

Inline fields: updates no longer append stray brackets, fields behind list/quote markers and brackets are parsed, writes are fence-aware so key:: value inside code blocks is left alone, and [[wikilinks]] survive multi-value edits.
YAML lists (including tags) are edited as native lists instead of being collapsed to a string, and malformed frontmatter no longer breaks parsing.
Kanban helper: only the card’s leading link is synced - trailing date/reference links are ignored; ambiguous same-named notes are never written to; a missing board property produces a single notice instead of spam.
Progress Properties count only [x]/[X] tasks as complete.
Safety: __proto__/constructor/prototype are rejected as property keys everywhere, and frontmatter writes are hardened.
No lost updates: settings and bulk writes are serialized through write queues, and the settings tab no longer clobbers concurrently added Auto Property choices.

Breaking changes

Full changelog

See the changelog for release-by-release history, or every commit since 1.8.4 on GitHub: 1.8.4...1.9.0.