Chapter 15
Make it yours, everywhere
Orbital keeps your choices in a document of its own in Tana, so the theme, the keys and the views you set on one Mac are there on the next. What belongs to one screen stays on that screen. This chapter covers those choices, and the housekeeping rows: export, reload, sync, updates and signing out.
The Settings window
Your lasting choices are in a window of their own, as any Mac app's settings are: press ⌘,, pick Open settings in ⌘K, or choose Settings… in the Orbital menu. If it is already open, it comes to the front. Pick a tab in its toolbar and the window takes that tab's height; ⌘W closes it.
- General: the theme (Light, Dark or System) and the language Auto-translate shows notes in, or Off.
- AI: your ChatGPT sign-in (Sign In… opens your browser and shows the code to enter there) and the OpenAI API key, if you saved one before, which Remove clears. Then the two AIs, each a model and how hard it thinks: Quick AI for the small questions (Auto-translate, Discuss with, Auto-pick type and type icons) and Regular AI for reading images. Signed in with ChatGPT, the choices are the models your account offers, such as Sol 6 or Terra 5.6; the Quick AI starts on Luna 6 at Low and the Regular AI on Terra 5.6 at Low, and the iPhone app shows and changes the same two.
- Agents: a switch for each agent a node can be handed to (Tana is always on, one this Mac lacks says what to install, and an agent you linked is there under its own name) and the Default agent that Assign to Agent starts with. Linking your own agent is in ⌘K: Connect your personal agent ….
- Lists: the titles hidden from every list, with + to hide one and − (or ⌫) to unhide the one you selected, and whether MCP chats show.
Everything follows you to your other Macs, except what says On this Mac: a sign-in and a key belong to the Mac you entered them on. Each control makes the same change as its row in ⌘K (Choose models …, Choose agents …, Auto-translate …, Edit hidden items), so either way works, and a change made elsewhere shows in the window at once.
Light, dark, or follow macOS
Out of the box, Orbital follows macOS: light by day, dark when your Mac switches. ⌘K has two rows under Settings:
- Toggle dark mode (or Toggle light mode while dark) picks a theme and stops following macOS.
- Toggle system dark/light mode goes back to following macOS; its hint says Following macOS while it does.
The theme reaches every window at once, and follows you to your other Macs. The dark theme is a palette of its own, charcoal and soft, not the light one turned inside out.
Text size
Larger text ⇧⌘+ and Smaller text ⇧⌘- step the whole window's text up and down. Reset text size ⌘0 goes back to the standard size. Every pane and window follows, and this Mac remembers the size.
These three keys are fixed: they cannot be recorded over, and no other row can take them.
What follows you, and what stays on this Mac
The first time you sign in, Orbital makes a document in Tana called Orbital, whose first line says what it is. It holds your choices, and every Mac you sign in on reads them from there. This Mac keeps a copy too, so the app opens with your choices before the connection is up, and a change made offline goes to Tana once you are back online.
The rule is simple: a choice about your content is the same wherever you open Orbital; a choice about this screen is not.
| Follows you to every Mac | Stays on this Mac |
|---|---|
| Theme, Home, saved views, recorded keys | The window's size and place, and the sidebar's width |
| Each view's filters, sort, grouping, folded sections and which facts a row shows | Which page each pane had open, and where you were in it |
| Hidden items and the MCP chats switch | Text size |
| Type, field and saved-search icons, and a type's colour | Whether sensitive nodes are shown, and demo mode |
| Sensitive marks | Recently viewed and Recently deleted |
| Which nodes you watch for changes | Your OpenAI API key and your ChatGPT sign-in |
| Auto-translate, agent assignments, which agents are on and the default | Answers from @Codex and @Claude in a chat |
Recorded keys travel too
A key you record with ⇧⌘K on a ⌘K row is saved in the Orbital document, so the same key runs the same row on your other Macs. ⌘K, the command palette shows how to record one.
Export to PDF
Export to PDF (under Current node in ⌘K) saves the document you are on as an A4 PDF, read-only documents included. Anything you were still typing is saved first. A Save dialog opens with the document's title as the file name; cancel it and nothing is written.
The PDF has the whole outline, folded rows included, with its headings, lists, marks and images, in light print typography. It leaves out what belongs to the app: buttons, the Graph, typed fields, and the contents of referenced nodes.
Reload and Sync
Reload ⌘R
Reloads the whole window, every pane (the hint says Every pane). Whatever you were typing is sent first, the loader plays, and every pane comes back where it was. Use it when something on screen looks stale.
Sync
Asks Tana again for every open view, without reloading anything. Lists already stay live on their own, so you rarely need it. It has no key out of the box; record one if you like.
Help, the manual, updates and About
The Help group sits at the end of ⌘K:
- Help opens the short tour of the basics, as the ? in the window's header does.
- Open Manual opens this manual at orbital.md/manual in your browser, in your theme. It describes the latest release.
- Check for updates looks for a newer Orbital, as the app menu's Check for Updates… does. Orbital also looks by itself when it starts and once a day.
- About Orbital is described below.
Updating
When there is a newer Orbital, a card opens over the window with what is new: the release notes of every version since yours, newest first. Later (esc) closes it until the next check. If the Help tour or Quick Add Task is open, the card waits until you close it.
Update and Restart (↩) downloads the new version, with a progress bar where the buttons were. Orbital then checks that the download is signed by the same developer as the copy you have, quits, and opens again as the new version. If something goes wrong, the card says what, and Try Again starts over.
About Orbital
Says what Orbital is, links to its Website and the full License, and lists what it is Built with: Trellis for the panes, Electron for the app, Loro for live sync, each opening its own licence. Good to know sums up the licence in four lines, and says that Orbital is not affiliated with Tana.
Log out, and log in again
Log out of Tana (under Settings) asks once more on a page of its own. Log out ends the session in every Orbital window until you log in again, and closes every canvas window. Cancel or esc steps back. Your settings stay in Tana and on this Mac, so logging back in picks up where you were.
Signed out, ⌘K leads with Log in to Tana, and it is the only row that works: the rest wait, greyed, until you are in. ⌘K ↩ opens Tana's own sign-in. First steps walks through it.
Keys in this chapter
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Open settings | ⌘, |
| Larger text | ⇧⌘+ |
| Smaller text | ⇧⌘- |
| Reset text size | ⌘0 |
| Reload the window, every pane | ⌘R |
| Record a key for the highlighted ⌘K row | ⇧⌘K |
| Quit (the window closing keeps Orbital in the Dock) | ⌘Q |