Simple Trick for a Browser Multi-Tab Experience for Tana

by Zephyr

Background

I don’t understand why, given the choice between a standalone note app and a browser option, people would prefer the standalone app. I am making generalizations here, but assuming all else equal, the browser option is only better and would be my choice every time.

It’s about context switching.

In a browser, you reach out for information. In a note app, you synthesize information and think. Note app is the furnace of your thoughts. The closely packed browser tabs are much easier to reach than the taskbar in the process. Even if one would like to focus and avoid switching context, press F11 will let you enter full-screen (a la focus mode) and tuck away the browser UI.

Since opening in a browser is great, why not open in multiple tabs? It is a natural follow-up question.

Tabbing is the ultimate context switch for a note app. Opening in browser multi-tab is one crucial factor I rate note app UX.

Fortunately, Tana does offer some degree of a browser experience, which has seen recent improvements. Previously, with multiple Tana tabs, the in-app session would even try to synchronize itself across tabs, always locking to the same context and rendering any additional tabs pointless. Now, one can finally have multiple Tana tabs at once, each with different context, as ‘reserves’ or ‘stacks’, making it easier to switch between contexts compared to using in-app search or tiling panes on demand.

While the Tana team likely has their reasons for seemingly prioritizing the desktop app adoption, I personally prefer the browser interface. This preference has led me to create personal modifications to enhance my workflow.

The Problem

Despite the recent improvements, Tana in browser still has several main limitations:

Tana tabs don’t rename themselves in the og:title, which is responsible for the tab name display. You will face a bunch of tabs named ‘Tana’ which isn’t particularly helpful.

Opening links in a background tab with a simple middle mouse click minimizes friction and quickly creates the exact ‘multi-tab’ environment I’ve been advocating for. Tana chooses to deviate from this behavior by functioning more like an app, designing the bullet nodes as JavaScript-controlled objects rather than clickable links. I cannot overlook the potential time saving otherwise possible by this low-friction, high-frequency operation.

Tana’s link insertion too is always bewildering to me, as its editing experience feels awkward and nothing like traditional markdown links. I prefer to use my own supertag and make the link inline with a frontload title as prefix.

There’s an elephant in the room: Tana instances (both new tabs and the Tana app) open significantly slower compared to competitors like Notion. This is the real pain. While this issue is beyond the scope of my current modifications, I’ve noticed that the Tana team is tracking initial loading time in the dev console. Hopefully, they’ll address this in a future update.

The Solution

Building upon the work of https://github.com/verveguy/clip2tana, I’ve created a modified version tailored to my needs.

The forked repo is at https://github.com/zephyrinthewild/tana-tabs-and-links. with downloadable crx file and source code available in the releases section.

Note that this fork is primarily for personal quality-of-life fixes and its functionalities could easily be updated by the Tana team and author of clip2tana, hence may not be actively maintained.

The original clip2tana project has recently seen updates with enhanced features. I’ve chosen to stay on my own branch for now, focusing on the specific functionalities I need.

Key Features and Changes

Screenshots

before

after

Functionality

1. Periodic title detection and tab renaming for activated Tana tabs

2. I tweaked the original clip2tana behavior too

- UX improvement: success badge upon extension click

- Tana paste format

%%tana%%
- zephyrinthewild/tana-tabs-and-links [view in github.com](https://github.com/zephyrinthewild/tana-tabs-and-links) #link

Keyboard Shortcuts

I personally use tana custom keyboard shortcut alt shift l to grab current node’s url

Then with extension shortcut alt shift t, open new tabs with any qualified tana url in the clipboard

Permissions

original clip2tana permissions

Script injection, active tab access and write to clipboard

additional permissions of the fork

On-demand clipboard reading (open new Tana tabs), create context menu, and access all tabs status (for tab lifecycle).

Known Caveats

Tab tracking may stop if the user, while on an already tracked tana tab, refreshes or navigates away using browser controls.

Issues can be resolved by rebooting the browser or closing the tab.