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Reorder tabs in Tana desktop for faster focus

Reorder tabs in Tana desktop using drag and drop or keyboard shortcuts to shape your workspace and move faster without losing focus.
  • Emil Bryggare
  • Dec 12, 2025

Small improvements in navigation can have an outsized impact on how focused and fluent your work feels. With this update, tabs in Tana desktop gets even more support for keyboard shortcuts. You can now reorder tabs freely, using drag and drop or precise keyboard shortcuts, to move fluently while you work.

Tabs in Tana are part of your thinking surface

Tabs and panels in Tana are designed to let you work in parallel without losing context. You might have a daily note open next to a project, a meeting note, or a reference you keep coming back to. For many users, especially those doing deep or complex work, tabs are not temporary. They are part of an intentional layout that supports focus and flow.

This update builds on that philosophy by letting you decide not just which tabs are open, but also the order they appear in.

Drag and drop to shape your workspace

You can now reorder tabs directly by dragging them left or right in the tab bar. This is ideal when you want to quickly group related work, bring the most important tab closer, or visually mirror the structure of what you are working on.

For example:

  • Keep your daily note as the first tab, followed by the projects you are actively working on today.
  • Group meeting notes next to the project they belong to.
  • Move a reference tab out of the way without closing it.

This makes tabs feel less like browser history and more like a flexible workspace.

If you need to close a tab, you can always find it again by opening the global search with Ctrl/Cmd+S - this will show you recently viewed notes. You can also find the 100 most recently edited notes that you have created or edited in the Recents view in the sidebar.

New keyboard shortcuts for power users

For users who prefer staying on the keyboard, we have added shortcuts for both navigating between tabs and reordering them. This means you can adjust your workspace without breaking your flow.

Jump to tabs

  • Tab 1–8
    • Mac: ⌘ + 1 … ⌘ + 8
    • Windows/Linux: Ctrl + 1 … Ctrl + 8
  • Last tab
    • Mac: ⌘ + 9
    • Windows/Linux: Ctrl + 9

Move between tabs

  • Next tab
    • Mac: ⌘ + ] or Ctrl + Tab
    • Windows/Linux: Ctrl + Tab
  • Previous tab
    • Mac: ⌘ + [ or Ctrl + Shift + Tab
    • Windows/Linux: Ctrl + Shift + Tab

Reorder tabs with the keyboard

  • Windows/Linux
    • Move tab left: Ctrl + Shift + Page Up
    • Move tab right: Ctrl + Shift + Page Down
  • macOS (including laptops where Fn is required for Page Up/Down)
    • Move tab left: Ctrl + Shift + Fn + ↑
    • Move tab right: Ctrl + Shift + Fn + ↓

If you rely heavily on keyboard navigation, this gives you full control over both where you are and how your workspace is arranged.

Why this matters if you are evaluating Tana

If you are comparing tools, tab behavior often sounds like a minor detail. In practice, it says a lot about how a tool treats focus and context.

In Tana, tabs are not just a way to open multiple documents. Combined with in-tab panels, structured content, and keyboard-first navigation, they support working across tasks, notes, and knowledge without constant context switching. Being able to reorder tabs reinforces that model. Your workspace adapts to your priorities, not the other way around.

Tana Desktop loads your whole knowledge graph, making it fast to open notes in tabs or panels, search and mention existing notes. Tana Desktop also supports offline for longer periods of work without WiFi.

This is especially relevant if you:

  • Work with multiple projects in parallel.
  • Take frequent meeting notes and need to move between context quickly.
  • Prefer tools that reward keyboard fluency and speed.
  • Want a desktop app that feels like a thinking environment, not just a document list.

A small change that supports long-term flow

Reordering tabs is a small feature on the surface, but it supports a deeper goal. Tana aims to reduce friction between what you are thinking about and what you see on screen. When your tabs are ordered the way your mind is working, you spend less time navigating and more time actually doing the work.

This update is available now in the Tana desktop app.