Obsidian writers cannot keep note word counts in properties
Obsidian users want each note’s word count available as a property so they can compare and sort entries, including in Bases. The count is not readily available there: existing word-count features may only show it in the status bar, while manual updates and scripts require ongoing effort. Writers with notes split across files also have to keep totals up to date themselves.
For obsidian users organizing long-form writing in notes. Mentioned from Dec 2023 to Jan 2026 on Bluesky, product forums and Hacker News.
14 different people described this problem in 7 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 3.0/10
- Pain
- 4.6/10
- Frequency
- 9.8/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 5.0/10
- Who pays
- Professionals
- Competition
- Medium
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
Yeah, I’ll wake up some morning and sift thru these work arounds to get it to work, but I know it will chew up a whole day… Is it really that hard to get the word count of a note into a property?
writtenfool on forum.obsidian.mdDec 2025To be clear, here’s the goal: “Create a way of adding a frontmatter property item called word count and have it actually produce the word count and also add/update itself for each note in the vault
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
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- 17 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks