@noboilerplate Just in case this helps someone else: Mine was set to visible too, so I can't figure out why it's not always appearing by default!
it seems to persist for notes where I 'activate' them, ah well.
The work around I learned which solved the problem for me is that you can hit Ctrl-; to bring up an 'add properties' menu which makes it super simple to add tags or any other property for that matter.
It struck me typing this that @obsidian and perhaps note taking systems in general are like #neovim - the time you invest in streamlining the way you use them productively pays back dividends several fold!
Thanks for the response and thanks for all the amazing videos!