Work in several places at once

A window is a set of pages

Every pane in a window is a page: a complete outliner with its own view, its own place, its own Back and Forward, and its own filter. What you do in one leaves the others alone. Quit, start again or Reload, and every page opens where you left it.

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1. The window's header The house opens the Work View, the eye shows or hides sensitive items, then ⌘K and Help. They act in the pane in front.
2. A tab names its page. The bold one is the page in front of its pane.
3. Another tab in the same pane. Click it to bring its page forward.
4. The page's buttons Back, Forward and the rest show while the pointer is over the pane. The “…” opens the pane's menu.
5. The line between panes Drag it to give one pane more room.
6. Create new in the corner makes a new node in the pane in front.

A window with one page has no tab bar at all: it looks as if there were no panes, and the page's buttons sit in the window's header. The tab bars appear once there is a second page.

Open a pane, a tab or a window

New window ⌃⌘N

Opens another window, a little down and to the right of this one, on the page you were on. File › New Window does the same. Each window has its own panes. Only the first window remembers its size and layout for the next launch, so a spare window never replaces your usual one.

Closing the last window keeps Orbital in the Dock. Click the Dock icon, or a notification, to get a window back; ⌘Q quits.

Open something straight into a new page

Hold a key while you open a node and it lands beside what you have: ⌘ in a new tab, ⇧ in a pane beside, ⌥ in a floating pane. In ⌘K and ⌘S press ⌘↩, ⇧↩ or ⌥↩ on a result; in the outline, hold the key and click a bullet. Finding your way has the details.

Tabs, and moving pages around

A tab names its page, so a view, a saved search or an app page under a tab drops its own heading. A document keeps its title.

Drag a tab to rearrange the window. Drop it on another pane's tab bar to make it a tab there, on the edge of a pane to dock it beside, or away from the panes to float it. The tab bars along the top also drag the whole window.

The pane menu

Right-click a tab, or click the … at the end of its bar. What the menu offers depends on the page:

• Refresh on a saved search asks its query again.
• Rename where the page's title can be typed in: the title is selected, ready for new words. ⌘K Rename does the same.
• Copy link on a page that shows a node from Tana copies that node's link.
• Save as new search on a view with pills, such as the Library.
• Delete on a saved search. ⌘Z brings it back.
• Maximize, Float, Move and Close for the pane itself.

Close a page ⌘W

⌘W, the tab's ×, the menu's Close or ⌘K Close pane close the page. Whatever you were typing is sent to Tana first. The last page never closes on its own: ⌘W then closes the window.

Move between panes, and zoom

With more than one page in a window, ⌘K gains a row for every move between them. Each has a key, pressed from inside any page.

Saved views, the Work View and Home

A saved view is a whole window kept under a name: its panes, where each sits, and what each one shows. Open it later and the window is rebuilt, every pane where you saved it. Saved views follow you to your other Macs.

Save view…

Lay the window out, then run Save view…. Type a name and press ↩ on Save view “…” (with no views to update yet, the page just says Type a name for this view). To update a view you already have, pick it from the list under the field instead; it keeps its name, so Home and any key you recorded for it still find it.

A page on today's day node or this week's is saved as “today” and “this week”, so the view opens on the day you open it.

Open one, or remove one

Your views are listed under Saved views in ⌘K. Choose one and the window reloads into it. From a second window, the view opens in your main window, which comes forward.

Remove saved view lists them to take one off. The Work View is always there: save over it to change it, but it cannot be removed.

The Work View and Home

The Work View is the view Orbital starts with: today's Timeline on the left and My Tasks on the right. The house in the window's header opens it.

Home is where Go to Home ⇧⌘H takes the whole window. It is the Work View until you run Set as Home, which keeps this window as a saved view called “Home”. Remove that view and Home is the Work View again. Finding your way shows both.

The Graph pane

The Graph pane lists what the document in your current pane is connected to: what is pinned to it, what came out of it, where it is mentioned, and how it changed. One window has one Graph pane, and it always shows the links of the pane you are in.

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1. Pinned What is pinned to this meeting or space. Where you may add pins, “Pin something …” at the end of the section opens search to pin another node here.
2. Outcomes Tasks it owns, ticked off right here with Space or a click.
3. References Documents it owns that are not tasks.
4. Mentioned in Every document that mentions it: its backlinks.

Backlinks come in the groups Tana's own Backlinks panel uses. A node picked in another node's field gets a section per field, named Type › Field, and plain mentions come last under Mentioned in. On a meeting's write-up, Proposals lists what Tana's AI proposed in the meeting's chats. Changes, at the bottom, is the document's history, newest first: who changed it and when, with a pen for an edit, a new page for Created and a bin for Deleted.

A section with nothing in it is left out, and a document with no links says so. Click a section's heading to fold it; it stays folded. The Graph is live: a new mention or pin shows up while you look.

It follows the pane you are in

Click into another pane, or move there with ⌘/, and the Graph switches to that pane's document. A row you open from the Graph opens in that pane.

Focus graph

Focus graph in ⌘K puts the keys on its first row, as a click on its tab does. It has no key out of the box: record one with ⇧⌘K.

See who else is on the page

When someone else has the same document open in Tana, you see their caret: a thin line in their colour at the character they are on, with their name on it. It moves as they type. Each person keeps one colour everywhere.

You show up for them the same way. While your caret is in a row, Orbital tells Tana where it is, and stops when you leave the outline or the window. Your own other tabs and Macs show too, under your name. Lists and views show no carets: only the document on screen does.

Canvases open in a window of their own

A canvas is a board to draw on, with no outline inside. Orbital does not draw it itself: a canvas opens in a window of its own, showing Tana's board. The page you came from stays where it was, and opening the same canvas again brings its window forward.

Click a canvas row, or press ↩ on it, to open its window; holding ⌘, ⇧ or ⌥ opens the window too. New canvas in ⌘K makes one at once, named the way Tana names one (“Canvas Sep 30, 2026, 2:05 PM”). Canvas under Create new … asks for a name first. Logging out closes every canvas window.

Keys in this chapter

Every one of these is a ⌘K row, so ⇧⌘K records a different key for it. Rows with no key yet, such as New tab, Show graph and Focus graph, can get one the same way.