Explain the problem as you see it
Currently Tana needs an always on internet connection to function. No internet (even for a moment) = No access to Tana. No access (or slow and intermittent access) to Tana is a huge problem when it is being used as one's "everything OS". Not being able to reliably access the main repository of one's data or daily page seriously compromises the potential for Tana to become the hub around which one's life is organised.
Why is this a problem for you?
I’m working in a country (South Africa) where we have multiple power cuts a day and our internet connection often drops. It means that not only are there times when I can’t access Tana but also that there are periods of laggy, delayed and generally slow connections.
This problem also applies to anyone who has connectivity issues and these are common even in countries with developed internet infrastructure, or simply when people are commuting or on flights etc.
Suggest a solution
Some kind of Offline mode would presumably solve both these issues in that one could continue working with no internet - and also just have basic access to one's data- and the lagginess would be buffered by a local cache leading to a far more zen like experience of all that Tana has to offer.
While I can't speak as to how to implement this technically it doesn't seem (but I appreciate I might be completely wrong) that much of a stretch to have a local cache that buffers connection issues. This is not a request for full-blown local database (though that would be nice) but just a mechanism to allow for temporary offline access.
As always thanks to everyone at Tana for the amazing work they are doing in creating a game-changing piece of software.
18 Comments
I get that local-first is hard and comes with challenges with data consistency. I also get why Tana tries to invalidate sessions when the app is updated, to prevent drift.
But all this said, I wish Tana erred on the side of good user ergonomics rather than easy development.
I think the biggest point of friction here is the long load time as your Tana workspace(s) are loaded into memory.
Whatever you can do to ensure lazy loading or local caching is appreciated.
Right now, Tana is a bit of a “worst of all worlds” type of app.
It’s not local-first like Obsidian or LogSeq, yet I’m paying the up-front cost as a user to load all that data into memory without benefiting from local caching beyond a single session.
It’s not an optimized cloud-based app like Notion, where content is lazy-loaded as I navigate. So I can’t benefit from (faster) initial loads.
It’s very similar to Roam, which has the bad habit of loading your whole graph into memory each time.
A good compromise would be to let me locally cache just my personal workspace, in local storage or a SQLite DB, however you implement it, as long as it loads near-instantly and writes reflect optimistically while syncing in the background.
Surely there’s no need to ensure perfect consistency between multiple users, since my personal workspace is single-user. I don’t mind if there’s eventual consistency between the canonical cloud store and my local cache, as long as every session loads near instantly after perhaps the first cold boot.
Also, there’s no need for this to be a native mobile app. It can be a PWA, with the web interactions spruced up to work well on touch devices and web workers leveraged to do some of that syncing work
same required as this one ：https://ideas.tana.inc/posts/64-let-tana-store-all-information-locally-without-syncing-to-cloud
Likewise, this would be essential for my work-use. To be clear - when you get to pricing, local-only would be an option that'd be worth extra for me (and likely many others with data privacy concerns).
I am in total agreement. Working offline and having a local copy on your desktop or mobile device needs to be TOP PRIORITY!!!
Agreeing: I am often offline when brainstorming or working with new communities, and need a single workflow for capturing ideas while talking or thinking. Currently I do that in an offline editor, where those notes often stay. I would love to do that and also future work online in Tana.
I also often need a quick creation of a new note, with no latency, before it fades. Having an offline-first option would also help address Capturing Ideasd On The Fly.
This was a huge step forward. As Andric says, it would make it even better to have an offline mode so that the app or other interface works whether or not there's a local network connection + pong from a Tana server.
This would a really difficult feature to implement I can imagine. Because of the "syncing hell" issues and possibility of data loss. This is also probably why Notion has never really tried to make it offline.
But I can see this being a huge competitive advantage against Notion if this succeeds. Out of all the syncing solutions I've seen, the one I love the most is actually Anki's because it gives the option to either keep the local copy or cloud copy. This shifts the burden of any data loss to the responsibility of the user. Also, having some kind of rollback like Dropbox does would be supremely useful.
I couldn't agree more with this. Talking about Anki, I have a lifetime account with Remnote which has an excellent offline mode while retaining many PKM features, so we know it's possible.
My newfound love for Tana really took a turn when I tried to work on a train today. If a tool is to be your main one, you need some kind of work mode that isn't JUST capture. It wouldn't have to be an entirely offline mode, just something so that I can work well during flights etc. Maybe a special "airplane" workspace with limited functionality that you can work in, and then pull things in manually when you are online again.
There is an icon displayed for the option to sync when the network is back as shown in the attached image:
1- Select individually
2- Select all
3- or choose to automatically sync when network is available
The content in my Tana KB is only useful if I can get to it whenever I need it. This includes when offline.
I see three distinct uses for offline access...
One distinct problem is needing to get answers from my Tana KB in all circumstances. I really do need this while traveling to places that have little or no internet access. Imagine working while on a plane with no internet, or commuting on a train, or being at a conference with spotty internet access, or a locale with no internet. The list is long...
I think offline read access of our Tana KB is the most important priority.
Second offline usage - I want to capture my data while on the go - and that includes when I'm offline. For me, this could be a specific method of capturing my content while offline. It does not need to include all the bells and whistles of Tana and doesn't require full edit access of my KB.
Finally, the third offline usage scenario is the ability to fully edit my Tana KB while offline. Personally, I do not need that level of offline access. But I can see why it would be a major use case for many people.
Thanks!
c-
I really want to adopt Tana for my personal life, note, knowledge management; but this lack of good mobile and offline access is what's stopping me for right now.
Right now I'm using Roam, for this reason. (I love Obsidian also and their offline-first strategy, but unfortunately I'm unable to access Obsidian at work due to needing to sync the vault to my local computer, which I'm not allowed to do. So I'm on Roam for now since it's a web app which I can access from work. It's really important to me to be able to access my notes/vault/whatever you want to call it from wherever I may need it.) So I
It seems like offline capture is already a thing with the 'Tana Capture' mobile app, which is actually pretty slick and cool, loads quickly (unlike Roam on Mobile), but still doesn't solve the problem of easily accessing/editing my full vault on mobile, and/or offline.
Thank you very much;
the ideal solution would be to have my data accessible on my local disk so that I could also set up my own version control system with the tool of my choice, as I've done with Logseq. I enjoy working with Tana on a daily basis, it's really a great tool but I really miss this feature. I think it's very important to allow people —who want— to manage their private data themselves.
I'm currently trying to get away from Notion, which I've come to really love, because I know it's never going to work offline. After returning from a month of travel where I had to resort to Apple Notes and not have access to my data, I've had it with using an online first tool for my basic data and notes.
Adding offline to an application like this after it has already been built online first is hard. I would be very surprised if Tana pulls it off. Notion promised offline forever, and I'm pretty sure they've given up.
When looking into Tana, I was very excited. It's a much better feature set for me. The direction is much more aligned with what I want, whereas Notion has developed more as business tool, focusing on collaboration etc (one more reason I think offline will never happen).
I love what appears to be LogSeq and Obsidian like features such as outlines and backlinks, with more functional and generalized database types, inheritance, etc, to Notion's slightly-better-than-Google-sheets approach.
Unfortunately, I can't see myself committing to a tool that isn't built with offline as a priority as I don't trust it will ever actually work offline. After my experience with Notion, I caution all of you not to rely on the promise of offline. I hope it comes, however I doubt it will. It's just not worth the anxiety of losing access to my data when I go for a walk in the woods or get on a plane.
The best option I have found is Anytype, which has an offline - local - privacy first approach. This is the way. I hope Tana finds it.
Yeah. Tana looks SOO TEMPTING.
But no. Never again am I going to use an online-first app as my primary life database.
The primary reason I found Tana is looking for alternatives to Notion, after peak frustration with lack of offline support (and related slowness).
I absolutely love what Tana is building, but it's not an upgrade from Notion for me if it's not offline.
Really good app!!! But the lack of offline access/storage is a HUGE problem...
Offline mode please :)
Something that would allow Tana to be used as a proper sketchpad for thinking. I live in Indonesia, and unfortunately internet is not always as stable or fast as I want to. Thanks!
Chipping in! There is no better use of travel time for me than working with my KB. So please offline mode for Tana!