Marker icons and colors in a Bases map

Every note can carry its own icon and its own color on a map. This page shows where to set them, which icon names draw something, and what to check when a marker does not look right.

Marker icon and Marker color are Obsidian’s own map options. They work whether or not Advanced Maps is installed, and installing it changes nothing about how you set them. 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. A Base is an Obsidian file that collects notes and files you filter for, and shows them as a table or a map.

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. Note properties come from frontmatter, the properties block at the top of a note.

Option	Give it	It expects
Marker icon	a property such as note.icon or formula.My icon	the name of an icon from Lucide, the icon set Obsidian’s markers use — 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 a filled circle with no icon inside. 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 points to a misspelled name. A dot means the value is missing. The marker 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

A Base formula is a small expression that gives every note a value it does not store. A formula gives every note an icon without any note storing one, which is why these options take a property rather than a value.

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

Some notes may already carry Star or an emoji. A formula that maps those values onto real Lucide names fixes every marker at once, and no note has to be edited.

With Advanced Maps installed

Advanced Maps adds layers to the native map; native markers stay as they are. 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.