Custom properties add structured, typed fields to your notes — turning a pile of writing into something you can filter, sort, and query.
Creating a property
Sidebar → More → Custom properties → New property. Give it a name and a type.
The same dialog opens from Settings → Workspace: the Custom properties section there has a Manage properties button. Any member of the workspace can manage its properties.
Properties are workspace-scoped: define Status once and it is available on every note in that workspace. Names are unique per workspace, case-insensitively.
The eleven types
Type | Description |
|---|---|
Text | A single line of text |
Number | A numeric value |
Date | A calendar date |
Checkbox | A yes / no checkbox |
URL | A web link |
An email address | |
Phone | A phone number |
Select | One choice from a list of options |
Multi-select | Multiple choices from a list of options |
Relation | Links to other notes |
Member | People from this workspace |
Select and multi-select options carry a label, a color, and an order you control.
Relation links notes to other notes as structured data. A Client property on meeting notes, pointing at the client's own note, gives you a real reference you can filter on — something a tag cannot do. Relation values also show up in the Linked notes panel.
Member holds people rather than text. Create an Assignee, Owner, or Reviewer property and pick from the people in the workspace — no typing names, no two spellings of the same person. Values render as avatars, and you can filter a list down to one person's work. See Assignees and member properties below.
Date values also show on the Calendar page, next to your reminders, with a colored dot for each date property. Dragging one to another day there changes the value, and ⌘Z moves it back. See Reminders and the calendar.
Built-in properties
Two special properties exist in every workspace and cannot be deleted:
Tags — a multi-select. Manage tags from the sidebar rather than here.
Board — a select whose options are your kanban columns. Manage columns on the board rather than here.
They appear the first time you use tags or a board. Being properties is what lets tags and board columns work in the same filters, sorts, and views as everything else — and lets both be shown in the sidebar as filter sections, which is the one setting the dialog offers on them. Tags is shown by default; Board is not.
Setting values
Open a note and use its Properties section. Values also appear as chips on note cards. Hover a chip to see which property it belongs to — handy when two properties hold similar-looking values, like two dates.
AI chat can set property values for you — useful for backfilling across many notes at once — and it can define a new property, add options to one, or rename it, and rename a tag or a board column. Member values included: it knows who is in the workspace, so "set Owner to Anna on everything in Doing" works. What it cannot do is delete a property or an option, because that erases values on every note that used it.
Assignees and member properties
A Member property picks from the people who are in the workspace right now — so it only becomes interesting once you have shared the workspace. In a workspace of one, it is a property with exactly one possible value.
A note can hold several people on one member property. "Single assignee" is just a convention — pick one person and stop.
The picker searches by name and email, and shows each person's avatar.
Sorting by a member property sorts by name; notes with nobody assigned sort last.
Filtering by a member property narrows the list to the notes assigned to the people you pick.
When someone leaves the workspace, their assignments go with them. Removing a member — or their leaving — clears their values from every note in that workspace, in the same step. This is deliberate: a name left behind would point at somebody who can no longer open the note, and could not be filtered for, since the filter only lists current members. Notes they wrote stay put; only the assignment is cleared. Re-inviting somebody does not bring their old assignments back.
Showing properties in the sidebar
A property whose values are a fixed set of things can be shown in the sidebar as its own section, next to Tags. Open More → Custom properties, select the property, and switch on Show in sidebar. Sections appear in the dialog's order.
Type | What the section lists |
|---|---|
Select, Multi-select | Every option, as its coloured chip |
Member | Everyone in the workspace, with their avatar |
Relation | The ten most-linked notes it points at, most-linked first |
Board (built-in) | Every column |
Tags (built-in) | Every tag, as today |
Each row carries a count of the live notes holding that value — binned notes are not counted — and clicking it filters the list, exactly as picking the same value in the Filter popover would. The two share one filter: a row selected in the sidebar shows as checked in the popover, and Clear clears both. Rows within one section combine with OR, sections with each other and with the popover's other filters with AND, and the usual limit of 10 property filters applies.
Text, number, date, checkbox, URL, email, and phone properties do not get sections: their filters need a value or a range, which is what the popover is for.
To remove a section, hover its header in the sidebar, click the settings button that appears, and choose Remove from sidebar — the property itself is untouched. The same menu offers Edit property, which opens this dialog with that property already selected. A select property with no options yet, or a relation nobody has linked to, stays hidden until it has something to show.
If every section is removed, Tags included, a Configure sidebar button appears in the empty space whenever you hover the sidebar; it opens this dialog. The sidebar's other parts are described in The sidebar.
Filtering and sorting
This is where properties pay off.
Combine up to 10 property filters, ANDed together
Text properties support contains
Number properties support ranges
Date properties support ranges
Select and multi-select match on options
Relation matches on target notes, and member on people
Filter by whether a property is set at all, or whether a checkbox is ticked
Sort by a property, ascending or descending
In Table view, use the column picker to show properties as columns — the closest thing Notez has to a spreadsheet over your notes.
Worked examples
Reading list. Status (select: To read / Reading / Done), Rating (number), Author (text), Link (URL). View as a board grouped by status, or a table sorted by rating.
Shared backlog. Assignee (member), Board for stage, Due (date). Filter to one person to see their queue, or sort by assignee in Table view to read the whole team at a glance.
CRM-style notes. Company (relation → the company's note), Last contact (date), Stage (select), Owner (member). Filter to stage is Active and last contact before last month to see who has gone quiet.
Content pipeline. Board for stage, Publish date (date), Channel (multi-select), Draft (checkbox), Writer (member).
Notes and limits
Properties are workspace-scoped; they do not cross workspaces
Each property value is stored as exactly one typed payload, so a number property is genuinely a number for sorting and range filters
Deleting a property removes its values from all notes
Removing a member from the workspace clears their member-property values there
Property changes are undoable with
⌘Z, and a change is skipped entirely if the value did not actually changeSearch matches text, URL, email, and phone values plus select option labels — numbers, dates, checkboxes, relations, and members are filterable but not searchable as text