Marker icons and colors in a Bases map

Marker icon and Marker color belong to Obsidian’s first-party Maps view, not to Advanced Maps. They work whether or not this plugin is installed, and Advanced Maps leaves them exactly as you configure them.

This page collects what those two options accept, which icon names render and which ones quietly render nothing, and how to drive both from a Base formula. Obsidian ships a worked example of the basics in the Maps plugin’s example vault.

Where the options live

Open a Base, switch to its map view, click the view name, and open Markers.

Both options take a property, not a literal value. Any note property or Base formula works as long as its value reads as plain text.

Option	Give it	It expects
Marker icon	a property such as note.icon or formula.My icon	the name of an icon from the Lucide library
Marker color	a property such as note.color	any CSS color value

A note with neither property still gets a marker: a small dot on a circle filled with --bases-map-marker-background, the map’s default marker color.

Icon names that render, and names that go blank

Caution

An icon name has to match Lucide’s own spelling exactly. When it does not, the marker is not an error and not a fallback dot—it is a filled circle with no icon inside, and nothing is written to the console.

Value in the property	What you get
star	the Lucide star icon
lucide-star	the same icon — the lucide- prefix is accepted
map-pin	the Lucide map-pin icon
a YAML list whose one item is star	the star icon — a single-item list reads as its own text
Star	filled circle with no icon — names are case-sensitive
map_pin	filled circle with no icon — Lucide separates words with -, never _
🌲	filled circle with no icon — emoji are not icon names
any name Lucide does not have	filled circle with no icon
the property is absent or empty	the default dot
the literal text null or undefined	the default dot

A filled circle with no icon therefore points to a misspelled name, while a dot means the value is missing. The marker itself tells you which one to check.

Colors

Marker color is passed to CSS untouched, so every form CSS understands works:

color: red
color: '#e03131'
color: rgb(224 49 49)
color: var(--color-purple)

A var() color is resolved against the current theme, so it follows light and dark mode by itself. Obsidian’s own accent and color variables are the easiest way to stay consistent with the rest of the app.

Caution

A value CSS cannot parse is not reported either. not-a-color, #zzz, and a var() naming a variable that does not exist all resolve to the theme’s text color — a near-black marker in a light theme, a near-white one in a dark theme. An unexpected flat color usually means the value is invalid; a missing property is different and gives you the default blue instead.

The glyph inside the marker is not per-note. Every icon is drawn in --bases-map-marker-icon-color, one value for the whole map, which a CSS snippet can restyle:

.workspace-leaf-content[data-type='bases'] {
  --bases-map-marker-icon-color: #fff8e7;
}

Driving both from a formula

Formulas are the reason these options take a property rather than a value. A formula gives every note an icon without any note storing one.

Decide from another property:

if(note.rating >= 4, "star", "circle")

Inherit from a linked note, so that changing one type note restyles every marker that points at it:

list(type)[0].asFile().properties.icon;

Then select the formula as the property. In the .base file it reads:

formulas:
  Rated icon: if(note.rating >= 4, "star", "circle")
views:
  - type: map
    name: Map
    coordinates: note.coordinates
    markerIcon: formula.Rated icon
    markerColor: note.color

A formula is also the repair for inconsistent notes. If some notes already carry Star or an emoji, a formula that maps those values onto real Lucide names fixes every marker at once, without editing a single note.

With Advanced Maps installed

Advanced Maps adds layers to the native map; it does not replace native markers. Your icons and colors are drawn by Obsidian exactly as configured. Two interactions are worth knowing:

• Note markers that would overlap are fanned out into rings, and each one keeps its own icon and color. The spread is a screen-space offset — a marker’s stored coordinate never changes, and Fan out overlapping pins turns it off. See Around views and navigation.
• Photo thumbnails and track lines are separate layers, so a Base holding notes, photos and a GPX file shows all three without your markers changing.

When a marker looks wrong

Symptom	Cause
Filled circle, nothing inside	The icon name is not a Lucide name. Check case and - versus _.
A dot where you expected an icon	The property is empty for that note, or resolves to null.
Every marker is the same color	Marker color is unset, so the map’s default is used for all of them.
A flat near-black or near-white marker	The color value is not valid CSS, so it resolved to the theme text color.
Nothing changed after editing a note	The property is set but not selected under Markers.

Measured against the first-party Maps plugin 0.2.2.