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Feature

Interface

Tana's interface is built around a flat sidebar, a create menu, quick chat, search, and an activity feed.

TL;DR

The sidebar is a flat list of destinations (Today, Activity, Tasks, People, Library, and your spaces) with Search and Account grouped in a bottom section. The create menu makes anything from meetings to skills. Quick chat (Cmd+L) opens an AI conversation from anywhere. Search spans the whole workspace with filters. The desktop app adds tabs and split view for working with multiple documents at once.

  • Flat sidebar: Today, Activity, Tasks, People, Library, and your spaces
  • Bottom section groups Search and Account
  • Create menu: make meetings, docs, canvases, tasks, chats, types, skills, and custom types from anywhere
  • Quick chat: press Cmd+L to start an AI conversation instantly
  • Search across your workspace with filters for space, type, and editor
  • Activity: a two-column dashboard of your notifications and recently updated items
  • Desktop app supports tabs and split view for working with multiple documents

The sidebar

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

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.

Tasks

The global Tasks view. The My tasks tab shows everything assigned to you, and Team tasks groups every task by assignee. See Tasks for how the view is organized.

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 see your whole workspace as a grid of space cards, narrowed with the same filter bar as Search. Anything that does not live in a space or on a meeting lives in the Library, and its location shows a book icon with a "Library" label. In the sidebar, each space can be expanded to show the types defined in it. Click a space to open its home page, or click a type to see all items of that type.

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 your workspace, so events and calls stay legible and consistent.

Create menu

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

Click the magnifying glass in the sidebar toolbar or navigate to the search page. Type a query for full-text search across your workspace.

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
  • 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.

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
  • Advanced: Experimental features and developer tools, including the Call Sounds toggle that gates the join, leave, raise-hand, and group-chat tones in meetings.
  • 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:

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 - Tana Learn