Tana Current Monthly Update (November 2025)
Major Releases Coming
Several major updates are ready to ship in the next few weeks:
1. Recents
A new sidebar item that automatically shows your 100 most recently edited nodes.
No more hunting for that thing you were working on. Recents gives you quick access to work in progress without building search nodes or trying to remember where you left things.
This uses a new “entity” concept. Tana now distinguishes between important objects and nodes that are simply parts of larger entities. Entities include tagged nodes, direct library children, and anything captured from mobile. The result is that you see meaningful items in Recents instead of 100 small nodes nested inside a single note.
Behind the scenes, this represents a meaningful shift in how Tana understands and organizes your content.
2. Sidebar Upgrades
The sidebar improvements we previewed last month are now live. Read the launch blog post.
Fully collapsible sidebar
Click one more time to completely hide the sidebar (beyond the mini bar) for distraction-free work. One click brings it back. This gives you a clean canvas when you need to focus.
Resizable sidebar
Drag the sidebar edge to make it wider or narrower. Your preferred width saves automatically and persists when you reload. Use Command: "reset sidebar width" to return to the default. Useful when you want to see deeper into your tree structure without leaving the sidebar.
Hide hard-coded items
Remove items you don't use from the sidebar (AI chats, super tags, etc.). Restore them anytime with Command+K > Toggle (item) in sidebar or find them in Settings > Preferences. Customize your sidebar to show only what matters to you.
3. UI Facelift
The whole Tana UI has gotten a facelift with a more modern and elegant color palette. We've improved the contrast on buttons, menus and tabs.
- Dark mode now has a darker shade on the background for content, for better readability. The sidebar and buttons is now slight lighter.
- Light mode has a lighter shade on the sidbar/background, and better contrast on menus and buttons.
4. Filter Toolbar Improvements
A streamlined one-line toolbar that puts filtering controls right where you need them.
- Search and filter by title always visible
- Changing search is now straightforward (previously required menu navigation)
- Dedicated buttons for group, sort, and display options
- Applied filters shown in a separate button
- Active filters highlighted in blue
- Toggle visibility from the context menu
- Filters are now accessible without diving into menus
Small changes like this add up to a noticeably smoother daily experience.
5. Nano Banana Pro Image Generation
We've upgraded image generation in Tana to use Nano Banana Pro, the best image generation model on the market.
What You Can Do:
Set banner images for projects and notes
Create infographics and visual summaries
Generate whiteboard explanations
Make comics and visual explanations
Create napkin sketches and hand-drawn style visuals
Generate meeting summaries as images
Visualize complex knowledge instantly
Why This Is Powerful:
Nano Banana works with Tana’s context system, so you can send entire meeting transcripts, book notes, or complex knowledge structures. It understands information deeply and turns it into accurate visualizations while also writing text with minimal mistakes. It is cost-effective because sending large context is cheap and the difference between a short sentence and a long transcript is small. You can generate images in 1K for in-app use or 4K for external use, and then download them for use anywhere or in Tana Publish.
Custom Commands:
Build your own image generation commands
String together different models (use Opus to generate prompts, then send to Nano Banana)
Create prompt libraries that improve over time
Template pack coming with pre-built commands for infographics, banners, and graphic design
Easy to edit prompts- just edit the command like any other Tana command
Use Cases:
Meeting summaries as visual infographics
Book notes turned into personalized visual summaries
Marketing assets generated from launch content
Project banners that make your workspace beautiful
Complex concepts explained visually
This feature represents the power of having AI models integrated into Tana's context system rather than as separate tools. It's transformative for how you can visualize and work with your knowledge.
Where We're Headed
We're working on two parallel tracks: refining what Tana does today, and building toward a future where AI works seamlessly with your knowledge.
Refining Today's Experience
After a period focused on new user experience, we're shifting attention back to power users and the day-to-day experience of using Tana. That means addressing paper cuts, fixing bugs, and making small improvements that add up.
Some recent fixes that have shipped:
- Checkbox state visible in search results
- Select multiple nodes and pin them all at once
- Tana credits now visible in GPT log monitor (see exactly how many credits each prompt uses)
We're systematically tracking and triaging bugs reported by the community. Because Tana is a complex system, some fixes require careful work - changing one thing can affect many others. But we're identifying quick wins that can ship fast, and you'll see more of these rolling out regularly.
Building the Best AI Experience
Our above improving day to day useability in Tana is straightforward with AI: make Tana the best place to work with AI while keeping everything in context. No copy-pasting, no switching between tools.
Areas we're exploring:
Making context easier to use - Better ways to pull your notes into AI conversations and get exactly the context you need
- Smarter token usage - More efficient handling of large context nodes and multi-message conversations
- Prompt engineering workflows - Leverage Tana's structure to build reusable prompts and prompt libraries
- Model selection - We're adding new models (like the three that just shipped) and improving how you choose between them (reasoning levels are now visible)
- Media support - Exploring ways to support more media types in AI workflows
- Voice features - Continuing to invest heavily in voice capabilities
- AI for your workspace - This is the big one everyone's waiting for. We're taking our time because we want to get it right—avoiding the trap of creating something that burns tokens without delivering real value. We're choosing the harder path that leads to something genuinely useful.
The vision of AI that understands everything and can build anything is compelling, and we're building toward it. You can already see glimpses of this future in features like Nano Banana Pro, where your full context connects directly to AI capabilities, not as a separate tool, but as an integrated part of how you work.
The story of November 2025
This month we delivered some long-awaited features- offline mode finally shipped, new AI models are available, and mobile workflows are getting more powerful. But more importantly, we're starting to see how the pieces fit together.
And as a recap, these are all the things that went out the door in November:
What's Shipped in November
1. Offline Mode
Offline mode is now live and working. Most users may not need it daily (connectivity keeps improving), but it's there when you need it; on flights, in remote areas, or during network outages. Delivering this long-requested feature was great! Read more
2. New AI Models from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic
Three new models are now available in Tana:
GPT 5.1 - OpenAI's latest
Gemini 3 - Google's newest release
Opus 4.5 - Anthropic's latest Claude model (shipped yesterday)
All three are available in the model picker, grouped by cost tier. We've also added reasoning level controls (low to high) so you can adjust how deeply each model processes your queries. Read more
To use: Press space anywhere in Tana to start a chat with context from that part of your knowledge, or click the model picker to choose your model. Since everything in Tana is a node, you can chat about specific nodes or start a general AI conversation.
3. Customizable mobile widgets for home screen
New mobile widgets enable quick capture, including a one-tap meeting super tag widget for starting meetings instantly.
iOS Shortcuts & Automations - Create shortcuts and automations that trigger Tana actions based on location, time, or actions in other apps. For example: automatically prompt Friday questions at 3 PM to ensure they get answered on time. Capture directly to specific super tags based on context—tasks during work hours, ideas when you're out walking, book notes when reading.
This unlocks automation workflows: start Tana actions when you arrive at a location, complete tasks in other apps, or at scheduled times throughout your day. Read more
4. Checkbox state in Global Search
Global search (Command+S or sidebar search) now shows checkbox states in results. You can quickly see which tasks are done and which aren't across your entire workspace. (Direct checkbox interaction in search is coming soon.)
5. Progress Wheel in Sidebar
A visual progress indicator you can pin to your sidebar:
- Displays completion status for any node containing checkboxes
- Progress bar and wheel update as you check off subtasks
- A checkmark icon appears when everything is complete
- Pin multiple progress wheels to track different areas at once
Beyond tasks, use this to monitor bug reports, track launch checklists, or visualize any checkbox-based workflow. Multiple progress wheels give you a dashboard view of what's happening across different parts of your workspace.
Upcoming events
In December we will have our annual Founder AMA which will cover roadmap items. Tana Current will return in January.
We are currently weekly free events for both beginngers and advanced users:
- Weekly beginners drop-in session with Ev Chapman
- Tana Learn Live - deep dive introductions into core feature
- Tana Live Build Sessions - we build out complete systems to solve use cases
Learn live and Live build sessions are recorded and the recordings are made available after the event: