Chapter 4
Go into anything, and back
Every row can be a page of its own. You go in with a click on its bullet and come back with ⌘[. This chapter shows every way around: into nodes, back and forward, home, and into other panes.
Going in and coming back
Click a bullet to go in
Click a row's bullet and the row becomes the page: its words are the title, its children the rows. This is called zooming in. Any node opens this way, from a bullet, a mention, a search result, a pin or a notification.
The page opens at its top. The caret waits in the draft row at the end, out of sight, and the first key you type scrolls down to it.
Back and Forward ⌘[ ⌘]
⌘[ goes back to the page you were on, and ⌘] forward again. They are also the arrows at the top right, and Go back and Go forward in ⌘K. Each page keeps its own history, so going back in one pane leaves the others alone. With nothing to go back to, Back does nothing.
If the page you are on is deleted or archived, here or in Tana, the pane goes back to the page before it, and the deleted page leaves the history.
With the keyboard
With nothing focused, ↓ or ⇥ puts you on the first row and ↑ on the last. On a row you cannot type in, Space goes into it; on a reference, Space opens what it points at.
The title and the buttons above it
The title says where you are. There are no breadcrumbs: Back walks the way you came.
The title
On a document you can edit, the title is edited in place, like a row. ↩ finishes and goes to the first row; esc puts back what was there. ↓ from the title goes to the first row, and ↑ from the first row comes back up. A task shows its checkbox before the title (⌘↩ ticks it there too), and a meeting shows its full date and time. The titles of members and meetings cannot be edited.
The buttons
Point at a page and its buttons fade in at the top right; move away and they fade out. Each button's tooltip names its key.
- Back ⌘[, greyed when there is nowhere to go.
- Forward ⌘]
- Meeting On a page that came from a meeting: opens that meeting.
- Graph Shows or hides the Graph pane of this page's links (see Windows).
- Home Opens the Work View.
- Sensitive items Shows or blurs what you marked sensitive (see Sharing).
- ⌘K Opens the command palette.
- Help The short tour of the basics.
The first four belong to the page, and a button that does not apply is left out. On a list page there can be more: the switch that folds the filter pills away, the Outliner / Table switch that shows the rows as a table (see Views), and Clean up when changed rows are waiting to move. The last four belong to the window and act on the page in front. When a window holds several pages, each page's own buttons sit in its tab bar instead.
A page that came from a meeting
A task that Tana's AI took from a meeting, or a note written in one, remembers where it came from. Its page shows the meeting button at the top right; the tooltip names the meeting and its day. Click it to go to the meeting.
A meeting always opens at its write-up, the notes of what was said. That is true from every route: a bullet, a search, a pin. More in Meetings.
A canvas is different: it opens in a window of its own, on Tana's page for it, and the page you were on stays where it is.
Home and the Work View
Home is the window you come back to. Go to Home ⇧⌘H takes the whole window there, all its panes at once. In ⌘K it says what Home is, and while you are already there it is greyed with “Current”.
Until you choose otherwise, Home is the Work View: the Timeline on the left and My Tasks on the right. The house button at the top of the window always opens the Work View, whatever Home is.
To make the window you have now your Home, with its panes and what each one shows, run Set as Home in ⌘K. It is kept as a saved view called “Home”; remove it and Home is the Work View again. Saved views are in Windows, panes & the Graph.
Recently viewed, and where you left off
Open search with ⌘S and type nothing: the list shows Recently viewed, the last twenty nodes you opened, newest first. It is the quickest way back to something you just had.
Orbital also remembers where every page was. Quit and start again, and each pane opens where you left it, at the same node. The very first start opens the Work View.
Opening a node somewhere else
Hold a key while you open something and it opens beside what you have, not in its place.
- ⌘ opens it as a new tab in this pane, as a browser does.
- ⇧ opens it in a new pane beside this one.
- ⌥ opens it in a floating pane over the window.
In the outline, hold the key and click a bullet. In ⌘K and ⌘S, use ⌘↩, ⇧↩ or ⌥↩, or hold the key and click a row; it works even before the search has answered. On a row that opens with a plain click, ⌥-click opens it in a floating pane; ⌘- and ⇧-click there select rows instead (see Selecting rows).
A place is shown in one pane at a time. Open something that is already on screen in another pane and Orbital takes you to that pane. The Library is the one page that can be open in several. Panes, tabs and saved views have their own chapter: Windows, panes & the Graph.
Keys in this chapter
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Go back / forward | ⌘[ ⌘] |
| Go to Home | ⇧⌘H |
| Search, with recently viewed | ⌘S |
| Open as a new tab / beside / floating | ⌘ ⇧ ⌥ + click |
| The same from ⌘K or ⌘S | ⌘↩ ⇧↩ ⌥↩ |
| First row / last row, with nothing focused | ↓ ↑ |
| Go into a read-only row or a reference | Space |
| From the title to the first row, and back | ↓ ↑ |