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Template Picker

widget

Template Picker

A right-pane widget that lets you assign or change the template of the currently active note, plus a Missing Templates page that finds every note that still doesn't have one.

How it works

The widget appears in the right pane and shows a dropdown of your configured templates. Selecting a template sets a ~template relation on the current note (and, if the template row has a Color configured, mirrors it onto #color). Selecting "None" removes the relation.

Which templates appear, and in what order, is configured in the addon's settings note rather than derived from the tree on every note switch.

Configuring templates

Open the addon's settings note and use the Templates tab:

  • Scan for templates (its own tab) searches the tree for every #template note and adds a row for any not already listed, enabled, at the end of the list. Existing rows keep their name, enabled state, and position, so scanning again after adding a template is safe.
  • Enabled controls whether a template appears in the dropdown and in the Missing Templates page.
  • Row order is the dropdown order. Use each row's move-up/move-down controls to rearrange.
  • Name is the text shown in the dropdown. It defaults to the template note's title and editing it does not rename the note.
  • Color, if set, is mirrored onto #color whenever this template is assigned.
  • Actionable marks this template's notes as representing actionable work — for other addons that key off it rather than owning their own type vocabulary.
  • Bucket Icon, if set, is used by other addons that scaffold one folder per template (a BoxIcons class without the leading bx, e.g. bx-check).
  • Root Note, if set, is the container note collecting this template's notes — see Bundled roots. Scan does not fill it in; point it at your root yourself.

Click Save to persist your changes.

Rows whose template note has been deleted are skipped automatically. If the active note's ~template points at a template that is disabled or not listed, the dropdown shows "⚠ Not listed" rather than reporting the note as having no template.

Before the first scan the registry is empty, and the picker falls back to showing every #template note sorted by title.

Bundled templates

This addon ships nine ready-made templates under its own Templates container note, persisted so your edits survive updates. Run Scan to register them in your dropdown if they aren't there already.

When a later version changes a bundled template you have edited, TAM's Update Review shows both versions and lets you choose; Keep Mine is the default. Your saved settings are reviewed the same way but one setting at a time, so nothing you configured is ever replaced wholesale.

Seven are item templates — Ideas, Goal, Routine, Task, Future, Project, Note — moved here from agenda@beatlink in 1.5.0.

Link (added in 1.14.0) is a saved web page: a Web View note whose #webViewSrc and #url labels hold the address, which is the note shape web-preview@beatlink drives its toolbar from and the Web2Trilium browser extension writes when it saves a bookmark or tab. Creating a note from it gives you an empty Web View note with both labels settable as fields; fill in the address and the page loads inline. Assigning it to an existing note only adds the labels — Trilium takes a note's type from its template at creation time, so switch the note's type to Web View yourself.

The last one, AreaCollection, is a container template: it carries #viewType=list and #type=areacollection, and is meant for the per-area root notes that agenda-organize@beatlink's triage queues walk. It is not meant to be picked as an item's own type — leave its registry row disabled.

Bundled roots

The addon also ships one root container note per bundled item template — Ideas, Goals, Routines, Tasks, Future, Projects, Notes, Links — inside the persisted Templates container, beside the templates themselves.

Each root is an empty text note carrying the matching template's #iconClass, #viewType=list, and a #label:area=single promoted-attribute definition (the same one the templates carry), so #area is a settable field on the root itself. Nothing files notes into them automatically.

Since 1.13.0 they are no longer children of the AreaCollection template, so a note created from that template does not come out holding its own copy of the set — move or copy a root where you want it.

They stand in for the type roots that used to be provisioned for you, so the containers still exist now that no addon scaffolds a notebook structure. Set a template's Root Note in the registry if you want a single global root resolvable from the registry, and if you use agenda-organize@beatlink, add its #agendaOrganizeType=<templateNoteId> identity label to a root for its queues to see it.

Missing Templates

A separate page (its own launcher note, "Missing Templates") lists every non-hidden note that has no ~template relation, one at a time — title, tree path, a content preview, and a button per enabled template to assign it on the spot. #template notes themselves are never listed. Assigning a template drops the note from the list; "Start over" replays it from the top.

Exclude Filters

The Exclude Filters tab holds a registry of named Trilium search queries. A note matching any enabled filter's query is hidden from both the picker widget and the Missing Templates list — use this for notes that intentionally never get a template (e.g. note.type = code or a specific subtree). A filter with a blank query is ignored; an unparseable query is skipped rather than breaking the rest.

Upgrading from 1.0.x

The #noTemplatePicker label is no longer read. To hide a template, scan once and untick its Enabled box.

Version 1.5.0 takes over the seven item templates that used to ship with agenda@beatlink. If you already have agenda installed, run migrate-templates-from-agenda.js once, manually, before updating either addon — it re-tags your existing template notes so this addon adopts them in place instead of agenda's next sync deleting them and this addon creating fresh blank ones. See that script's own header comment for exact steps. A fresh install with no prior agenda has nothing to migrate.