Frontmatter shown as a properties panel

Short answer: Unmarked turns the YAML frontmatter at the top of a Markdown file into a clean two-column properties panel instead of raw text. Keys are humanized, so last_updated reads as "Last updated." On export, one toggle keeps the metadata or strips it.

Frontmatter is the block of key: value metadata many tools tuck at the top of a Markdown file: a title, a date, tags, a draft flag. Static site generators write it, note apps write it, plenty of templates ship with it. In a plain text editor it's a wall of --- and colons you scroll past to reach the actual writing.

Unmarked treats it as structured data and lifts it out into a panel above the document.

What counts as frontmatter

For Unmarked to read it as frontmatter, the block has to be:

• At the very top of the file, the first thing in it.
• Fenced by a line of three dashes (---) above and below.
• Valid YAML in between.

Here's the shape:

---
title: Project notes
author: Taher
last_updated: 2026-06-28
tags: [draft, internal]
---

# Project notes

The document starts here.

Open that in Read mode and the fenced block becomes a two-column panel at the top of the page: keys on the left, values on the right. The # heading and everything below it render as normal Markdown underneath.

Humanized key names

Keys are written for machines. The panel reads them for people.

last_updated becomes "Last updated." window-start becomes "Window start." Underscores and dashes turn into spaces, and the first letter is capitalized, so the panel is legible at a glance without you renaming anything in the file. The underlying keys stay exactly as you wrote them. The humanizing is display only.

Keep it or strip it on export

Sometimes the metadata should travel with the document. Sometimes it shouldn't. Unmarked puts the choice in the Export sheet.

1. Open your file and choose Export (⇧⌘E).
2. Pick PDF, Word, or HTML.
3. Toggle Include properties on to carry the frontmatter into the export as a properties table, or off to drop it.

The toggle appears only when the file actually has a frontmatter block, and it's on by default. Strip it when you're handing someone a finished PDF and the draft: true line is none of their business. Keep it when the metadata is part of the document. Either way the source file on disk is untouched. The choice only affects what comes out of the export.

Note: The panel is for valid YAML at the top of the file. If the block isn't well-formed YAML, or it sits below other content instead of at the very top, Unmarked won't read it as frontmatter and the --- lines render as a horizontal rule the way Markdown normally treats them. A code block of YAML inside the document stays a code block. Only the leading fenced block becomes the panel.