Comparison
The short version
Tana is one of the most powerful tools in the modern note space. Supertags turn notes into structured nodes you can filter, query, and roll up into live views, with AI woven throughout. For people who want something close to a programmable knowledge base, it is remarkable. Mindly aims at the opposite kind of user: someone who wants the power of an organized second brain without designing the system that produces it.
The dividing line is effort. Tana rewards investment. You design supertags, fields, and queries, and once the structure is in place it does impressive things. Mindly removes that step entirely. You press one shortcut, and AI tags, summarizes, and connects each save on its own, so the library is useful from the first item with nothing to configure.
Both can hold a serious body of knowledge, but they ask different things of you. Tana asks you to be the architect. Mindly asks only that you capture, and it handles the architecture. If you enjoy building a query-driven system and will climb the learning curve, Tana is a strong choice. If you want a second brain that just works on your Mac, Mindly is the fit.
Tana at a glance: Tana is the right call when you want a programmable, query-driven knowledge base built on supertags and are happy to invest in the learning curve.
The context
Tana may be the most ambitious tool in this space. Supertags turn notes into structured data, live queries assemble views that update themselves, and AI is woven in deeply. For people who want something close to a personal database of everything, it delivers things nothing else quite does. The people who step away usually respect all of this. What they decline is the job that comes with it.
That job is schema design. Tana asks you to decide, largely up front, what kinds of things exist in your world and what fields they carry. It is a genuinely powerful way to work, and it is work: the learning curve is real, the structure needs revisiting as your projects change shape, and a capture that does not fit the schema nags at you until it does.
Some people discover, a few weeks in, that they wanted the outcome (an organized, searchable memory) but not the role of database administrator for their own life. That is the switcher Mindly is built for. Capture with one shortcut, in any format, and AI supplies the tags, summaries, and connections a schema would have demanded you define. The structure emerges from what you save rather than preceding it.
Side by side
| Topic | Mindly | Tana |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | People who want capture and organization to be automatic. | Power users who want a programmable, query-driven knowledge base. |
| Capture | One shortcut captures notes, links, files, voice, video, and screenshots. Everything lands as items in one library. | Create nodes and apply supertags. Capture is tied to structuring as you go. |
| Organization | AI tags, summarizes, and connects every save automatically. Nothing to configure. | You design supertags, fields, and queries. Powerful, but yours to build and maintain. |
| Learning curve | Press the shortcut and save. There is nothing to learn before it is useful. | A real learning curve. The payoff comes after you invest in structuring tags and views. |
| Where your library lives | On your Mac, in a folder you own and can export. | In the Tana cloud, synced across platforms. |
| Visualization | Interactive mind map for the ideas that actually connect | Live, queried views and nodes. No spatial mind map of ideas. |
| Mixed media | Notes, links, PDFs, screenshots, and voice memos all live and connect in one library. | Node and tag focused. Less of a home for voice, screenshots, and files. |
| Platforms | macOS, built native | Web, desktop, and mobile. Cross-platform by design. |
Beyond the table
Tana's model is schema first: the value of a note depends heavily on the supertag it wears and the fields you fill, so structure precedes content. When the schema matches reality, everything downstream (queries, views, rollups) feels effortless. When reality shifts, the schema needs migrating, and unstructured saves sit outside the system's power. Mindly is capture first: press ⌘M, save the thing, done. Tags and connections are inferred afterward by AI and keep forming as the library grows. The practical test is simple. If designing the model of your knowledge sounds energizing, Tana. If it sounds like a prerequisite you keep postponing, Mindly.
A supertag is a small commitment: fields to define, conventions to remember, existing nodes to update when the definition changes. Individually cheap, collectively a system you maintain, and Tana's power users maintain theirs happily the way gardeners weed. The question for everyone else is what happens in the weeks the garden gets no attention. Untended, a schema drifts out of sync with how you actually capture. Mindly's equivalent structures (tags, summaries, links) are generated per item by AI, so there is no definition layer to fall behind on. You give up the precision of typed fields and get back every hour you would have spent tending them.
Tana retrieval is at its best when you query structure: every node with a certain tag, every field above a certain value. That precision requires the tagging to have happened and the query approach to be learned. Mindly's search asks for a sentence. Describe what you half-remember in plain language and semantic search matches by meaning across notes, PDFs, voice transcripts, and screenshot text, no fields required. Then you can open whatever it finds and chat with it directly. Structured queries win for data-like questions. Plain-language search wins for the far more common moment of wondering where that thing went.
Tana lives in the cloud, synced across platforms, which is exactly right for people working across devices who accept a hosted home for their knowledge. Mindly makes the opposite bet for a different person: the library is a folder on your own Mac, readable offline, exportable to standard formats, and there is no account needed to start. AI processing is the nuance on both sides; Mindly's runs over encrypted channels and content is not retained after the request. If any-device access is a hard requirement, Tana's architecture wins. If local ownership of a personal archive is the requirement, Mindly's does.
Tana's world is made of nodes, and text-shaped knowledge thrives in it. The further your raw material drifts from text, the more the model strains: screenshots, PDFs, and voice memos are peripheral citizens in a system built around structured outlines. Mindly was designed around mixed capture from the start. A voice memo arrives transcribed and searchable, a screenshot is OCR-read, a PDF can be opened and chatted with, and all of them join the same mind map as your notes. For a tana alternative that treats non-text capture as the main event rather than an attachment, this is the clearest separation between the two.
Which one for you
Choose Mindly when
Choose Tana when
Making the move
Tana can export your workspace as JSON, and from there the move is selective rather than wholesale.
Common questions
It depends on the direction you are moving. Toward more automation: Mindly, which replaces schema design with AI tagging, summaries, and automatic connections over one-shortcut capture, stored locally on your Mac. Toward similar power with different trade-offs: Notion for databases with collaboration, Logseq or Obsidian for local outlines and files. Most people leaving Tana are leaving the upfront structure, which points toward the automatic end.
Compared to a plain notes app, yes, and Tana's own community would not deny it. Supertags, fields, and live queries amount to a small data-modeling discipline, and the payoff arrives after the model is built rather than before. Committed users climb the curve in a few weeks and find it worth the effort. If you want value on the first day with nothing to design, that is the trade Mindly makes instead.
Yes, with honest limits. Tana exports JSON, and there is no automatic converter in Mindly, so the practical path is bringing content over selectively: paste important notes, drag exported files in, and let the AI tag and connect them. Supertags, fields, and queries do not translate, because Mindly generates structure instead of storing yours. The content moves; the schema retires.
Tana is better if you want a programmable knowledge base and enjoy being its architect: typed structures, live queries, views that update themselves. Mindly is better if you want the organized outcome without the architecture. One shortcut captures anything, AI handles tags, summaries, and connections, semantic search covers the whole library, and everything is stored locally on your Mac. Pick by whether the building is a cost or a pleasure.
No. Mindly's structure is generated, not declared: AI applies tags, writes summaries, and links related items automatically, and semantic search works across everything without any fields to fill. You cannot define a typed schema or run structured queries over field values, which is a real loss if your workflow depends on them. In practice, most personal libraries need retrieval more than they need structure, and that is the case Mindly optimizes for.
No. Mindly is a native app for macOS 14 and later, with the library stored locally on the Mac, and there is no web or Windows version. Tana's cross-platform reach is a genuine advantage if you work across devices or operating systems. If your knowledge work happens on a Mac, the native approach is what buys the speed and the local library.
If this comparison resonates, try Mindly on your Mac. One shortcut for mixed saves, a library that lives on your device, and AI that organizes everything automatically.
Free to start. macOS 14.0+. No credit card required.