Alex N

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.

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.