Every line is a node

Rows and markers

A page is a title with rows under it. Every row is a node of its own: a block of the document you are in. A row with children has a thin guide line running down beside them.

A page scrolls on past its last row, so the line you are typing at the end can sit in the middle of the window.

Only list rows carry a marker. A bullet row has a dot, a numbered row its number. Text, headings, quotes and code have no marker, and their words start where the title's words start. Headings are darker than body text and open a new section with some space above them.

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1. Heading Three levels. No marker, darker words.
2. Chevron Shows on hover beside a row with children. A click folds or unfolds it.
3. Guide line Runs under a row's children.
4. Mention A link to another node, drawn with its icon. More under References.
5. Marks Bold, italic, strikethrough, code and links, inside a row.
6. Quote A bar on the left, no marker.
7. Code block Monospace on a grey panel.
8. Numbered list Counts itself.
9. Divider A thin line across the page.

A folded row keeps its dot, drawn on a soft halo, so you can see it has children. A web address in a row is a link: click it and it opens in your browser. The words in Tana stay exactly as you typed them.

When the caret is in a row you can type there; a row you cannot edit (a member, a meeting title, something read-only) shows a focus ring instead of a caret.

Typing and the keys in a row

There is no edit mode. Click a row and type. Orbital saves a moment after you stop, and again when you press ↩, leave the row or go somewhere else. A row in a view, like the Library, is a whole node: the first click selects it and the second puts the caret in (Views).

Tab nests, Shift-Tab comes back out ⇥

⇥ tucks the row under the row above it. ⇧⇥ moves it back out, to just after its parent. On a plain line of text, ⇥ first turns it into a bullet; ⇧⇥ on a top-level bullet takes the bullet off again.

Backspace at the start of a row ⌫

At the start of a row, ⌫ works in small steps. First it takes the bullet off. If the row above is empty, that empty row goes. Otherwise the row's words join the row above, with the caret where they meet. An empty row is removed and the caret goes up. Nothing joins across an image, a table, a divider or a reference.

Moving the caret

↑ and ↓ go to the row above or below and try to keep the caret at the same spot across. In a row of several lines, a code block too, they first move line by line. ← and → at the edge of a row carry on into the next one. From the first line of the first row, ↑ goes up through the page's fields, the nearest first, and then into the title; ↓ walks back down. A title you cannot type in gets a focus ring instead of a caret, and ↓ or ↩ leaves it again. ⌥↑ and ⌥↓ keep the Mac's own moves inside a row. esc leaves the row.

A new row takes after the row it came from: a bullet makes a bullet, a quote a quote, a numbered row the next number. After a heading or a code block, the next row is plain text.

Markdown as you type

Inside a row, a mark lands the moment you type its closing characters: **bold**, *italic*, ~~strike~~, `code` and [label](https://…) for a link. The caret stays just after the marked words, so what you type next is plain again.

Pasting works the same way. Paste several lines, or text with markdown in it, and it arrives as real rows: headings, nested bullets, numbered rows, checkboxes, quotes, code and dividers, with the marks kept. One ⌘Z takes the whole paste back.

The toolbar, marks and block types

For a child row, Text stays in the menu but greyed out: in Tana a child has to be a list row. The mark keys work without the toolbar too, on whatever you have selected. esc hides the toolbar and keeps your selection.

⌘↩ turns a plain row into a checkbox, presses again tick it, and a third takes the checkbox off. Select several rows and ⌘↩ does the same to all of them: rows without a checkbox get one first, then they are all ticked, then the checkboxes go. On a task it completes the task (see Tasks).

The “/” menu

Type / at the start of an empty row to choose what the row should be. Keep typing to narrow the list, then press ↩.

Under Blocks: the headings, Bullet List, Numbered List, Checklist, Code Block, Quote, Divider, Table and Image. Image also answers to “picture”, “photo” and “upload”.

Below the blocks come the things you can create: Doc, Task and the rest of what Create new … offers, with your workspace's own types under their own heading. Task asks for the task's name, makes it, and turns the row into a reference to it, as Tana's own “/” does. esc goes back to the list.

A meeting from “/”

Meeting works like Task, with one more page. Name the meeting and press ↩ on Choose when for “…”. The next page shows exactly when it will be before anything is made: Now, for 30 minutes when you type nothing. Type a time to change it: 14:00, tomorrow 9:30 or fri 10:00-11:30 are read on the spot. Other words, like tomorrow from 3-5, offer Read “…” with AI; the row says Reading “…” while the AI reads, and its reading comes back as the row to press, marked read by AI.

One ↩ makes one meeting, and the row says Creating “…” until it is there, as Task's does. The page says where it goes: In your calendar · nobody is invited. The row becomes a reference to it. esc goes back a page at a time: to the name, which is kept, then to the list.

@ links

Pasting a Tana link

Copy a node's link (Copy link, ⌘C in ⌘K, or a link from Tana itself) and paste it into a row. It lands as a mention of that node, named after it. If the link cannot be read, the row stays as it was and a red note says why. Pasted into a title, an image or a divider, a link stays plain text.

References and mentions

A link to another node comes in two shapes, and which one you get depends only on what else is on the line.

A mention sits among words. It is a blue link with the target's icon, and a click opens the target.

A full reference is a row with nothing on it but the link. That row is the node it points at: it draws that node's bullet, tags and grey line, and a task shows its own checkbox, so you can tick it off right there. Rename the node anywhere and the row follows. Type anything else on the line and it becomes an ordinary row with a mention in it.

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1. A task, referenced Its own checkbox. Tick it here.
2. A person, referenced Drawn with the member glyph.
3. A folded row Its dot sits on a halo: there is more inside.
4. Mentions Blue links among words, each with its target's icon: a person and a task here.
5. A task from a meeting The meeting glyph links back to where it was decided.
6. Web links Open in your browser.

Working with a full reference: a first click selects the row, a second click puts the caret in it, and ↩ on the selected row starts typing at the end. The bullet or Space opens the node. Unfold it with its chevron or ⌘↓ and you see the node's own outline under a dashed guide line; what you type there is written into that node.

When a node you link to is deleted, its links show it: a mention gets a trash glyph and a strike, and a full reference a trash bullet and a struck title. Neither opens. Undo the delete and they come back.

Images

Press esc on a grey row to cancel that file; the others carry on. Orbital takes the image types Tana does (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, SVG, TIFF and a few more) up to 50 MB each, and skips anything else in a drop.

On a picture, Space or a click opens it full size; esc, Space, ↩ or a click closes it. ⌫ or ⇧⌘⌫ removes it, and ↑ ↓ step over it.

Drafts

A page always ends in an empty draft row, so there is somewhere to type. It is drawn as what it will become, but it only exists in Tana once you type the first character. Leave it empty and it quietly goes away. ⌫ on it moves the caret up.

Moving, folding and removing rows

Undo and redo

Selecting rows

With rows selected, ⇧⌘↑ and ⇧⌘↓ move them together, ⇥ and ⇧⇥ nest and un-nest them, and ⇧⌘⌫ removes them. esc or a plain arrow key ends the selection. These keys never delete or move whole documents in a list.

Drag and drop

You can also move a row with the mouse. Pick it up by its marker (the dot, or the number) and drop it where a blue line shows it will land. Rows without a marker, like text and headings, show a small grip in the same spot when you point at them. An empty row cannot be picked up. A row in a view or on the Timeline that is not selected yet can be picked up anywhere on it, its words included; once you select it, a drag across its words selects them instead.

What a drop does

• Into a list, a line of text becomes a list row. A heading, code block or image refuses to become somebody's child.
• A document from a list (a view, the Library, a saved search) lands as a full reference to it. The list itself keeps its own order.
• Onto a meeting's row, the nodes you drag are pinned to that meeting, and a note says so.
• Onto a chat's message box, the rows go into your message: documents as chips, other rows as their words (see Chats).
• A task onto a group in a list grouped by responsibility changes what it is to match that group (see Tasks).

A row cannot move to another document by dragging; a reference to a document can. A selection of several rows travels whole only into a chat; to move several rows, use ⇧⌘↑ ⇧⌘↓ and ⇥.

Tables

With the caret in a cell, ⌘K has a Table group: Add row above, Add row below, Move row up, Move row down, Delete row, Add column left, Add column right, Move column left, Move column right and Delete column. Each is one undo step. Tana's rules hold, so the header row stays on top and the last row and column stay; a command that cannot run is shown greyed.

Paste an image into a cell and it goes into that cell, after the text. The table as a whole moves, selects and deletes like any row, with ⇧⌘↑ ⇧⌘↓ or a drag.

Keys in this chapter