At the very top of a note, between two lines of three hyphens, stand statements about the page: its title, a description, tags, a date. This block is called the frontmatter; Obsidian shows it as “Properties”. Quartz reads it and acts on it — and that is exactly what you control here: not what something looks like, but what happens to the page.
---
title: A page
description: One sentence for search, preview and lists.
tags:
- example
date: 2026-09-01
draft: false
---How to write frontmatter — the data types, the display — stands in 2.11 – Properties. Here stands what every field does.
The fields at a glance
| Field | Effect | Page |
|---|---|---|
title, description | title and preview text of the page | 4.1 |
date, lastmod | date under the title, order in “Recently changed” | 4.1 |
draft: true | the page is not built | 4.2 |
unlisted: true | the page is built but appears in no list | 4.2 |
aliases | further paths under which the page can be reached | 4.3 |
tags | tag list under the title, tag pages, filter of a base | Tags |
custom fields such as section | appear in the property table | 4.4 |
layoutBoxNote, layoutBoxCta, … | hide or refill a layout box on this page | 4.5 |
cover | a cover image for gallery and cards | 4.6 |
translationKey, lang | connect the page with its translation | 4.7 |
Custom fields are allowed
A field Quartz does not know does no harm. This template uses
section, for instance, for the display in the property table; and a layout box can insert any field as a placeholder{{frontmatter.name}}.