---
type: feature
keywords: hello world, bonjour
tags: [hello, bonjour]
---

# Note Properties

At the top of the file you can have a section where you define your properties. This section is known as the [Front-Matter](https://learn.cloudcannon.com/jekyll/introduction-to-jekyll-front-matter/) of the document and uses [YAML formatting](https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1214409/Learn-YAML-in-five-minutes).

> Be aware that this YAML section needs to be at the very top of the file to be valid.

For example, for this file, we have:

```markdown
---
type: feature
keywords: hello world, bonjour
---
```

This sets the `type` of this document to `feature` and sets **three** keywords for the document: `hello`, `world`, and `bonjour`. The YAML parser will treat both spaces and commas as the separators for these YAML properties. If you want to use multi-word values for these properties, you will need to combine the words with dashes or underscores (i.e. instead of `hello world`, use `hello_world` or `hello-world`).

> You can set as many custom properties for a document as you like, but there are a few [special properties](#special-properties) defined by Foam.

## Special Properties

Some properties have special meaning for Foam:

| Name    | Description                                                                                                                                                                      |
| ------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `title` | will assign the name to the note that you will see in the graph, regardless of the filename or the first heading (also see how to [[note-taking-in-foam]])                       |
| `type`  | can be used to style notes differently in the graph (also see [[graph-view]]). The default type for a document is `note` unless otherwise specified with this property. |
| `tags`  | can be used to add tags to a note (see [[tags]])                                                                                                                                 |
| `alias` | can be used to add aliases to the note. an alias will show up in the link autocompletion                                                                                         |

For example:

```markdown
---
title: "Note Title"
type: "daily-note"
tags: daily, funny, planning
alias: alias1, alias2
---
```

## Foam Template Properties

There also exists properties that are even more specific to Foam templates, see [[templates#Metadata]] for more info.

[//begin]: # "Autogenerated link references for markdown compatibility"
[write-notes-in-foam]: ../getting-started/write-notes-in-foam.md "Writing Notes"
[graph-visualization]: graph-visualization.md "Graph Visualization"
[tags]: tags.md "Tags"
[note-templates#Metadata]: note-templates.md "Note Templates"
[//end]: # "Autogenerated link references"
