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Checkboxes and progress bars

Tana’s checkboxes and dynamic progress bars help you stay on top of tasks. Add checkboxes anywhere, and the node above instantly show a progress indicator that reflects everything below, including nested subtasks and search-driven results. Pin a project to your sidebar to keep an up-to-date view of how work is moving forward.

Overview

Any node in Tana can be turned into a checkbox.

Press Ctrl/Cmd+Enter to toggle the checkbox on, check it or hide it.

If you add a checkbox below another node, the node above will automatically get a progress bar indicator.

The progress bar shows the number of checkboxes below the node that are done/not done.

Progress bars work with the outliner hierarchy, meaning that any progress bars below a progress bar will be counted into the top bar.

Progress bars will include results with checkboxes from search nodes

Checkboxes

Keeping track of tasks in the form of checkboxes are a fundamental part of a node. It is baked into the metadata of every node through the Done and Done time system fields. There are some very simple and powerful things you can do with checkboxes in Tana to track your tasks.

Add a checkbox to a node

  • Turn any plain node into a checkbox: Cycle through each checkbox state by hitting Cmd/Ctrl+Enter.
  • If you press Enter on a plain checkbox node to make another node, this new node will be automatically be a checkbox.
  • Checkboxes have three "done states": no checkbox, not done, and done.
  • You can find all checkbox nodes that is a descendant of a node by running the command Find todos within →. This is handy when you've been creating tasks on the fly and want to gather them all.
  • Special search terms exist for finding nodes with checkboxes:
    • TODO - finds all nodes with checkboxes, no matter their done state
    • NOT DONE - finds all nodes that are unchecked
    • DONE - finds all nodes that are checked
    • DONE LAST <X> DAYS - finds all nodes that were done the past X days. Write it out like this: DONE LAST 7 DAYS
    • For more, see Search nodes
  • Supertags have a setting to turn on checkbox by default: for more on that, see Supertags
  • Supertags can have their done state mapped to the values of a field: for more on that, see Supertags

Progress bar

Tana has a dynamic progress bar that aggregates checkboxes from nodes nested below the top node. This allows you to build out project plans with sub-areas and sub-tasks, and see progress at a glance.

Showing and hiding the progress bar

Automatically shown: When you add a checkbox below another node, the parent node automatically gets a progress bar indicator.

Show/hide the progress bar manually: You can right-click any node and select "Show/hide progress bar" or do Ctrl/Cmd+K > Toggle progress bar.

Shown in sidebar: If you pin a node with a progress bar, a progress bar will show in the sidebar, allowing you to see progress at a glance.

How the progress bar works

Progress bars in Tana work with the outliner hierarchy, meaning any progress bars below a progress bar will be counted into the top bar.

An item with a progress bar can itself have a checkbox. That checkbox will count only as a single item in the progress above it.

The count for nodes will include items that are filtered out (if filters are applied anywhere in the hierarchy).

Search Node Compatibility: The progress bar can be enabled on search nodes, counting the results if these are checkboxes.

Color indicates recency of completion

The green line in the progress bar communicates the recency of task completion. Dark green indicates tasks completed 7 days or older, while light green shows tasks completed today. There are four age-buckets in total: today, 1-3 days old, 3-7 days old, and 7 days or older.

How to Use the Progress Bar

  • ​Add Checkboxes: Simply add checkboxes (press Ctrl/Cmd+Enter on a node) below a node to see the progress bar appear automatically on the top node.
  • Enable the Progress Bar on any node: Right-click and select "Show progress bar, or use the command "Toggle Progress Bar" (Ctrl/Cmd+K) to turn it on or off.
  • ​See recent progress: Hover over the progress bar to understand the recency scale and see how much progress has been made recently.
  • Pin in sidebar: drag the node into the sidebar, or use the command Pin to sidebar to see the progress bar in the sidebar.

Sharing

Checkboxes and progress bars in Tana will also work in a published Tana nodes, using Tana View in Publish. This allows you to build effective project plans, client portals that keeps everyone up to date.

NB: Nodes must be re-published for updates to checkboxes to appear in the published page.

Learn how to publish nodes in Tana.