Tana: A New Note Taking and Graph-Based App

#21

Well, I got my Tana invite. I was watching some videos beforehand so I could jump right in. Unfortunately I am getting over a bout last week with Covid, and my wife has it now. So I will only be digging into it piecemeal for now.

I will basically say that, besides the usual advantages of other outliners, the “initial” draws of Tana are four:

  1. Every line of text (node) can be given the equivalent of a “tag-based fill-in-able view template”, with text, fields, dropdown lists, subtags, links, other nested “templates” etc. So every line tagged with #contact has whatever fields you set up for contacts, and they can be filled in differently for each contact. The “view template” can be updated, and changes apply to all new and existing nodes with that tag. And nodes with multiple tags have the “tag based viewtemplate” for each of their tags. This all beats having to create “custom new buttons” for each kind of data type.

  1. You can easily create custom list widgets by various criteria, and toggle between viewing the list items as a simple transclusion, as kanban cards, as tabular data, and as tabs. By easily I mean, Ctrl + K, start typing “find”, select the option “find nodes with” then type the tag, hit enter, then select to choose how to view it.

  2. Live queries, which I have not played with, but basically look like a step by step guide to further filtering the search results with more complex queries of and, not, or, etc.

  3. A boat load of helpful tutorial videos and onboarding.

I say “initial” draws, because the help section is loaded with advanced features. And there are lots of small features like emojis, etc.

Yes, yes, there are many advantages to TW: free, infinitely customizable, no one else has your data, plugins galore, great community, etc. And formatting in Tana is currently limited to B I U. But praise for Tana, even in a TW forum, does not imply criticism of TW. They are just different. And Tana is beautifully made. A lot of thought went into this.

And me? Well, that will take some time to figure out. I can see myself using this for productivity and brainstorming, even though I have a pretty good productivity setup in TW. I will play around with this for book notes, even though I like my current set up for TW. I might be too invested at this point. Tana has import from opml, so I could transfer from Dynalist…but I would never put confidential matters like business finances or contact data into a service like this. (just as I don’t with Dynalist either)

Anyway, Mohammad asked, so I wanted to give my initial first impressions now that I have my hands on it.

1 Like
TW5+TW6 informal discussion
#22

Just their opening screen was chewing up 30% of the processor of my CPU. So, that’s a non-starter.

Do you ever get the feeling that the main purpose of all those note-taking apps is to provide a diversion from the tedium of the thing you’re actually supposed to be working on? If it was about productivity, you’d learn one thing and stick with it.

1 Like
#23

Terms are always being appropriated for some unintended new use. The leading one I can think of is “meme”, which was never meant to mean “Picture with text”. It’s as if some supernatural force were punishing Richard Dawkins: “A term you invent will be used by millions of people, but not in the way you ever intended.”

1 Like
#24

Looks similar to Anytype.

#25

From the notetaker’s perspective, maybe. From the developer’s perspective, money and a sense of helping people.

But from what I am seeing from watching people use it is the joy of speeding up their workflows.