The sidebar is the main navigation in Tana. It sits on the left side of the screen as a flat list of destinations: Today, Activity, Tasks, People, Library, and your spaces. A bottom section groups Search and Account. There are no tabs.

On wider screens the sidebar is always visible and can be resized by dragging its right edge. On narrower screens it appears as an overlay when opened.

Today

The Today view. Your starting point each day: a greeting that flips through the day, the events rolling from Now to Next up, Upcoming, and Past, and quick access to create, meet, or search.

Activity

Activity sits right below Today as a two-column dashboard: your Notifications on the left and Recents, a time-grouped list of recently updated items, on the right. The columns stack on narrow screens, and the sidebar entry carries a blue badge with your unread count.

Notifications cover when someone:

Adds you to a document or meeting
Assigns you a task
Starts a call you are waiting on
Sends you a chat message
Archives or restores a type in your organization (the row carries the type title and a link to its panel)

Each notification shows who triggered it, what it is about, and when it happened. Click it to navigate to the source, and unread ones show a blue dot. "Mark all read" in the Notifications header clears them, and a "+" in the toolbar opens the create menu.

Both columns start collapsed and expand with a "View more" or "Show more" control. Recents carries the same filter bar used elsewhere in the Library (Space, the Meetings and Chats pills, Visibility, and the type palette). Narrow Recents to Chats and an MCP pill appears that scopes to chats started from an MCP client; it hides itself when none are in view. A recurring meeting series collapses to a single row, the occurrence closest to now, so the series keeps its place in the recency order without repeating.

Tasks

The global Tasks view: your tasks across every space, grouped by type and narrowed with filter pills (Assigned to, Created by, Type, Space) that live in the URL, so a filtered view is bookmarkable and Back and Forward step through it. It opens on what is assigned to you, and with no filter set it shows your most recent tasks. See Tasks for how the view works.

People

Your team, sorted by recent interaction. Shows:

Constellations: Groups of people you frequently interact with (3 to 5 people). Click to see everything you share with that group.
Individual members: Each person shows an online indicator (green dot when active). Click to see shared documents, or right-click for "Start Call."

Drag a task onto a person to assign it to them.

Library

Open the Library to browse everything in Tana by kind. The home shows an ordered preview of each category, Spaces · Meetings · Tasks · Types · Chats · Agents · People · Skills · Canvases · Docs, each with a See all link to its own page. Empty categories hide themselves. A category page shows the category title, a Library breadcrumb to step back out, and an inline search field; section routes (Spaces, Chats, Agents, Skills, Canvases, Docs) also carry the shared Created by and Visibility filter pills, and Chats adds an MCP pill that narrows to chats started from an MCP client. The Types page adds a single-select space filter. The Skills section lists only the skills your organization has authored; Tana's built-in system skills are filtered out. Media, meaning images, audio, video, and uploaded files, does not appear in the Library, space browse, or Search; it still renders inside the chats and documents that embed it. Anything that does not live in a space or on a meeting lives in the Library, and its location pill shows which category it belongs to; a plain task points to the Tasks view. In the sidebar, each space can be expanded to show the types defined in it. Space home uses the same section index, scoped to that space.

Spaces

Your spaces appear directly in the sidebar below the Library so you can jump to any space home in one click. See Spaces.

Bottom section

Search and Account live at the bottom of the sidebar, separated from the main destinations. Each opens the corresponding view or menu.

Dark theme on Today and meetings

Today and meeting routes render in the dark theme regardless of the rest of Tana, so events and calls stay legible and consistent.

The create menu is accessible from the pencil icon in the sidebar toolbar, or from the "+" button on space home pages and dates in Today. It is a searchable palette with these options:

Meeting, Doc, Canvas, Task, Chat, Type, Space, Skill
Custom types: Any types you have defined, grouped by space

When used from a space context, created items are scoped to that space and the Space option is hidden.

Tasks open as inline cards rather than navigating away. Everything else navigates to the new document.

Quick chat

Press Cmd+LCtrl+L on the desktop app to open a quick chat window. Type a message, optionally add participants, and press enter. The chat is created and AI responds automatically.

Press Cmd+Shift+LCtrl+Shift+L to open quick chat with voice dictation active. Your speech is transcribed directly into the message input.

Quick chat is the fastest way to ask the AI anything without leaving what you are working on.

Search

Open search from the Search entry in the sidebar, or with Cmd+PCtrl+P from anywhere, including while editing a document. It opens as a popover hosting the same browse interface: a search field for full-text search across Tana, the filter bar, and, when you have not typed a query or set a filter, the per-section index. On iPad and other touch devices it opens as a bottom sheet that stays clear of the on-screen keyboard.

The Library and Search share one filter bar of round pills:

Space: show items from a specific space (Search only)
Meetings and Chats: quick pills that narrow to those kinds
Created by: a people picker, with you pinned to the top as "(you)" and an "Anyone" option to clear it
Visibility: narrow by who can see an item, Any, Private to me, Shared with me, Restricted, Open, or Anyone with the link for items shared by link
More (⋯): a type palette for any other kind, including the types you have defined

Without a query, the filters act as a browse mode. Recent items appear under "Recently Updated".

Narrow to Meetings only and the view becomes a dedicated meetings table (title, the space it lives in, time, attendees, and a lock for private ones), sorted with the most recent first. Two sub-filters appear next to the Meetings pill: a time window (Upcoming, Today, or Past, with Today in your local zone) and Attendees, a multi-select people picker that shows meetings including everyone you pick. The Chats pill, Created by, and the type palette hide while meetings-only is active.

Panel title chip

As you scroll down any panel, a doc, canvas, chat, skill, agent, meeting, space home, and the rest, a compact title chip appears in the toolbar showing the item's avatar or thumbnail and its entity-type badge. Click the chip to scroll back to the top.

Settings

Open settings with Cmd+,Ctrl+, or from the account menu in the sidebar footer.

Settings sections include:

Profile: Your name and account details
Usage: Your AI spend against the monthly cap and rolling two-hour cap, shown as percentage progress bars with relative reset captions ("Resets in 3 days"). No dollar amounts. In environments where usage caps are not enforced, a gray info callout above the bars notes the bars are informational.
Calendars: Connect Google Calendar or Outlook
Integrations: Connect GitHub, Slack, Linear, Jira, HubSpot
MCP: Configure AI assistants to connect to Tana
Coding tools: Choose which coding tools are available to AI chat
Preferences: The Call Sounds toggle that gates the join, leave, raise-hand, and chat tones in meetings, and a Tana links row with a Reset for your saved open-in-desktop choice.
Advanced: Developer tools: Sketch Mode, Loro Debug, Live Query Debug, and Export Database.
Organization: Name, default content language, and other org-wide settings
Members: Invite and manage team members (admin only)

The account menu also lets you switch between organizations, view pending invitations, leave an organization, and sign out.

Desktop features

The desktop app adds features not available in the browser:

Tabs: Open multiple documents in separate tabs within one window
Split view: Work with two documents side by side. Use Cmd+Option+ClickCtrl+Alt+Click on any link to open it in the split pane.
New window: Use Cmd+Shift+ClickCtrl+Shift+Click on a link to open it in a new window.
Toggle sidebar: Use Cmd+SCtrl+S to show or hide the sidebar (also under View ▸ Toggle Sidebar). The same shortcut works on iPad with a hardware keyboard. In the browser it stays the page's "Save" shortcut.
Open in Tana: When you open an org-scoped Tana link in a browser and have the desktop app installed, Tana offers to open it in the app, with Open always, Open once, or Continue in browser. Your choice is remembered; reset it from the Tana links row in Settings, Preferences. Meeting links are excluded so guests can still join calls in the browser.
Meeting detection: The desktop app can detect active Zoom, Teams, and Meet calls for external meeting capture.

Sync

Tana syncs in real time across all your devices. The sidebar footer shows sync status. A cloud-off icon appears if authentication has expired and you need to sign in again. If a connected calendar silently stops syncing, an amber ! indicator with the tooltip "Calendar needs reconnect" appears next to the sync status in the user account row; reconnect from Calendar settings to clear it.

Interface

The sidebar