Joplin Plugin — Frontmatter Overview

Create dynamic tables based on frontmatter in your notes. Works on both desktop and mobile.

Quick Example

Given these two notes in a notebook called Books 2025:

| Note 1 | Note 2 | |-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ---title: Book 1rating: 5---Thoughts about book... | ---title: Book 2author: Author 2rating: 2--- |

Using the following code block in a note:

```frontmatter-overview
from: notebook:"Books 2025"
properties:
  - LINE_NUM AS Number
  - NOTE_LINK AS Title
  - title AS Book
  - author
  - rating AS ⭐
sort: rating DESC
```

Will generate this table:

| Number | Title | Book | author | ⭐ | |--------|------------|--------------|----------|---| | 1 | Note 1 | Book 1 | | 5 | | 2 | Note 2 | Book 2 | Author 2 | 2 |

Usage

To create a frontmatter-based table:

1. Use a fenced code block with the language set to frontmatter-overview.
2. Inside, define:
   • from: a Joplin search query to select notes, each note will become a row in the table.
   • properties: list of frontmatter fields to include as table columns.
     • Use AS to rename columns (author AS Author).
   • sort: (optional) sort the table by any property.

You can place multiple of these blocks in one note.

❗Does not work in Rich Text (WYSIWYG) editor. ❗

What is Frontmatter?

Frontmatter is a block of YAML metadata at the top of a note, enclosed in triple dashes: Since Joplin doesn't natively support frontmatter, it's best to leave a new line after the last property, so that it's not rendered as a header.

---
title: Example
rating: 5

---

This plugin supports Markdown links and images in the frontmatter, although they are not valid YAML. Images need to be Joplin resources in order to be rendered correctly.
A note with invalid YAML syntax will be shown with empty values in the custom properties. Tip: Add the NOTE_LINK column to easily find the problematic notes and fix the syntax.

Overview Block Options

| Key | Description | |----------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | from | Joplin search filter based on this syntax — all matching notes become a row in the table. | | properties | List of frontmatter fields or special properties — each will be a column in the table. Use AS to rename the property in the table header. | | sort | (Optional) Sort the table by a property (add DESC for descending). Value needs to match one of the original property names. | | excludeEmpty | (Optional) Exclude notes without frontmatter from overview. Value is a boolean, default False. |

Special Properties

• NOTE_LINK: A clickable link to the note using its title.
• LINE_NUM: The line number.

Features

• Embed multiple tables per note.
• Create permanent tables via Tools → Frontmatter Overview → Make tables in current note permanent (desktop only).
• Notes missing a property will have an empty cell.
• Notes with invalid frontmatter are included with empty custom property values (special properties like NOTE_LINK still work).
• The note containing the code block is excluded from the search.
• Set the maximum width and height of images in the settings.

Source Code

Find the source code here: https://github.com/Meisenburger13/joplin-frontmatter-overview

Please create an issue if you find a bug or are missing a feature and I will take look!