Notion - notes, docs, tasks Reviews

I absolutely LOVE this app and it has allowed me to streamline my note-taking and record-keeping habits and allowed me to use the same tool for so many things where my workflow used to be fractured across multiple apps- it’s truly incredible software. I love the creativity of both the this app team and the community of users they have fostered. Being able to share templates with one another is wonderful and the functionality of Notion is tremendous. However, as much as it pains me to say it, the outages this app has been experiencing has shaken my confidence in the software since I have really come to depend on it and, when the system is down, I can’t access any of the critical information I store there. I am so impressed by what the this app team have developed but if these outages continue to happen and we don’t have the ability to save our data locally, I will have to find another solution because I can’t afford to be locked out of the data I store on the platform. I hope the this app team is working on an offline sync, and if they are it would be so helpful for us users if they would share that information and give us a timeline. Much appreciation to the this app team for all of they’ve done. I definitely recommend Notion unless you can’t afford to be unable to access your data from time to time.

Daunting and confusing to use at first opening; bit of a steep learning curve. Once I got used to working with “blocks” and figured out Notion ’s system of organizing data works, I was able to start playing with Notion successfully. Creating personal templates was the hardest part, but once I got them to work, Notion is a suitable and potentially excellent way to keep and maintain a bullet journal. Lots of potential for being a personal database, bujo, recipe book, handy reference tool. I like the desktop app very much and how it syncs quickly with iOS apps.

I wish they had more export page sizes like A5, Executive, and half-size to print pages and place them in smaller binders. Also, better printing capabilities from both iOS and MacOS apps for those of us still in-love with analog journals and notebooks. And, guys, seriously, the premium PDF subpage document export feature is essential. Please rethink making this available to all or as an add-on to a personal account. Seriously. Wow.

Notion has taken over my life as I spend a big part of my day working in this app. I can organize my entire life in my space and keep notes from classes and life, I can keep a detailed reading list, I keep ideas and random thoughts organized in here, there’s almost a limitless amount of things you can do with this app.

Yes, there’s a steep learning curve but I found that it was worth it to get my life in order. DI looked on here to give a review and I saw a 4.1 rating!!!! What is that? This deserves a much better rating, but oh well. I guess it’s not for everyone since it is a big commitment on time, but if you are willing to put the work in, you’ll have much more than a calendar and todo list. You’ll have an operating system for your life! There’s so many resources as well that will show you the ropes and get you up to speed. Marie Poulin and August Bradley were where I turned, but there are so many other good ones out there but it’s all about your style and what you want to accomplish in it.

I’m going to stop this here because I could write here all day, but I need to get back to my workspace.

I feel that the iPadOS version of this app is a dumbed-down version of the MacOS version, with many features lacking that people have been asking for for the past several years, and that make Notion completely unusable for me on the iPad, forcing me to switch between different apps to accomplish tasks that would normally be done within this app on the Mac. - The font size is way too small on the iPad, and there is no way to change it. Notion doesn’t allow CMD +/- to increase font size, which has been one of the most voted requests on Reddit - You cannot have multiple windows, which is a MUST-HAVE for me to work. When I contacted their support, they suggested opening several windows in Safari. If that’s the solution, what’s the point of having an iPad app in the first place? - You can’t copy several paragraphs in a page. If you select multiple paragraphs, it’s impossible to copy/paste. Absolutely impossible. A feature that any iPad app has, but this app doesn’t! I can go on, but my advise is for the company to take a look at the Reddit forums and user feedback, and start prioritizing what people have been asking for for years over what the company keeps adding to compete with similar apps. In other words, please prioritize the user experience over features.

Absolutely life changing. I have never been more organized. It feels like I’m decluttering my life—every single thing has it’s place and when I have to schedule something new, I can pull out my calendar and immediately know what days and times are best for me. I have separate pages for school and personal, and each is broken down further (ex. School is broken down by degree, then course, then week, then assignment & I have an “Assignment Calendar” and a “Readings and Lectures Calendar”).
I watched several videos on how to use this app, and to be honest, I prefer the desktop version (I really only got Notion so I could have it on my phone). The videos I watched were specific to the topics I wanted (that is, school & personal) so it was easier for me to get a hold on the things I wanted/needed from this app. Plenty of people make suuuuper specific templates, so if you don’t want to make everything yourself, you can just download a template and edit it. It isn’t as hard as it seems!!!

I really enjoy the features of this application. However, I have run into a problem multiple times now where Notion will refuse to open. I click on it and the loading screen pops up but then nothing happens no matter how long I wait. I’ve tried clearing my apps, restarting my device, updating Notion if there are updates, but none of it helps the issue go away. The only way I have been able to resolve this issue when it occurs is by deleting and redownloading, which is far from convenient. I have noticed that multiple times when this issue occurred I was also playing a podcast from my device at the same time, but I can’t be sure if that has anything to do with it. If it does, clearing the podcast app and stoping the podcast does not help fix the issue anyway.

An additional issue that impacts my flow through Notion is an inability to copy and paste multiple lines/blocks of text. This is possible from the desktop version but not on iPad.

I’d give 5 stars if it weren’t for these pernicious issues.

I can still hardly believe this app is free to use (for personal use at least, I haven’t tried to collaborative/business mode).

There’s SO MUCH you can accomplish with Notion: note-taking, to-dos, lists, wiki’s, databases, journaling, etc.

I’ve used a handful of other apps with varying levels of success and satisfaction: Bear, Noto, Evernote, OneNote, Dropbox Paper, and of course the default Notes app. Each have their own limitations, quirks, and restrictions. Most require a subscription fee. Myself, it’s difficult to justify paying a subscription for an app that I will, in theory, use for the rest of my life (or until a new app or technology renders it unnecessary). (ie: $4.99/month sounds reasonable until I think—I might live another 40-50 years—which means $4.99 x 12 x 50 = ~$3,000!)

To wrap this up: this app does it all. You can use the features you need to cater to your purpose without the features you don’t getting in your way. I honestly haven’t come across a page I haven’t been able to setup and create based on what I pictured in my mind. So versatile it’s crazy! Oh and did I mention it’s FREE?!

I’m guessing this app will be bought by a Microsoft, Evernote, or other competitor in the near future. But I’m hoping the powers that be will protect Notion and let it continue in its current form forever.

Thanks so much for making an app that is sincerely a game-changer to so many people’s daily workflows.

this app is one of the note talking apps I’ve ever used, especially as a college student. I absolutely love the features that it offers, and the simplicity of the interface makes it so easy to use. It’s really easily to take notes during zoom meetings too, and the toggle feature is one of my favorites. The one thing I wish though is that each specific page stayed on the section you were at, instead of resetting at the top of the page when you enter it again. (This means that if I leave a page that I was working on and taking notes on, when I enter it again I have to scroll all the way down again which is really annoying). Secondly, it’s a little laggy especially on PC and it takes a few seconds for the words I’ve typed to appear on the page. Other than that, great app!

Please please please don’t ever get rid of Notion—I’ve built too much! I cannot put into words how much I love Notion. It’s so incredibly versatile meaning you can use it for organizing your files, taking notes, writing assignments, to-do list, reminders, etc. you name it. Basically, it’s google drive, Evernote, calendar, journal and Todoist, but centralized in one place. You can access it on all platforms (MacOS, iPhone, ipad), but I just prefer to use the web version on my devices since it can be kinda difficult to move blocks around or adjust its size on the iOS version.

this app would completely replace all my productivity apps if they would just incorporate a handwriting feature and maybe more typography options.

Overall, I love Notion and can’t believe how I was able to live without it for so long. As a ADHD graduate student, Notion saved my life.

Work that was very meaningful to me and represented a lot of time has been deleted from my Workspace, I believe because I let my Pro account expire and was over the block limit. I am appalled that work was just removed from my workspace without so much as a warning. I could have and would have deleted basically anything else in the workspace and been okay, but the one single thing that I was important to me is the thing that was removed.

Thankfully, my phone for whatever reason hasn't synced with the web version (which under normal circumstances would be horrible, but in this circumstance has saved me a ton of trouble). I can't do anything except hand-type the data into a new spreadsheet since I can't mass copy cells on my phone, which if infuriating, but at least my data is saved. It is going to take literal hours to hand type, however.

this app's decision to destroy my data without notification has definitely lost me as a customer, and I will not be recommending to anyone else. I was so gung-ho about this product at first, too, but destruction of data is absolutely over the line.

I don’t usually write a review but I have to share my love for Notion! I just downloaded it today and trying to use it as a place to organize all my class notes. Learning how to use Notion definitely took longer time than I thought but it worth! I’m happy to find that they offer all types of templates to organize your life and even work. I write codes in my work and I think I’m going to record all my codes and reports and everything in Notion! It gives such a clean and flexible system for recording codes and texts! I’m still learning about other functions and I’m sure they will update Notion to provide even better experience. I shared some advice with the team using chat and they responded very fast and provided me some alternative options too. Now I decide to move everything I have in other apps to this one. Great app by great team!

I usually don’t even remember to write reviews for apps but it should say something that I remembered to come back and leave a review for this one. I absolutely love Notion. I am the most disorganized person you would probably ever meet in your life and have tried so many different things. Some thing about Notion just reminds me to keep coming back and to add stuff to it and to actually look at it when I need to.I won’t go on forever about Notion you should just download it and try it for yourself since it’s free. There is a paid version which I will be using to organize my Instagram videos and pictures, which is amazing. I use it for so many things and it’s amazing. I love the way it’s set up to organize things into different categories and the ability to add pages and links and things like that. It has everything you could need. I love it!

I am a huge fan of this app. I use it several hours everyday to tackle, organize, and create things for both my work and home life. It is a truly amazing tool that has replaced several apps that I used to rely on. Don’t let this iOS app discourage, go check out the platform.

That said, the iPhone app is fairly useless when it comes to creating and organizing content. It’s slow, clunky, and buggy. It’s a fine enough app if you’re simply using it to review your content inside this app. It’s slightly better on iPad, but still not great. This is very clearly a desktop app that’s not reached maturity on mobile. Working with text, tables, styles, is slow and unintuitive (or broken). Trying to select text, hold space to move your cursor, make edits across multiple paragraphs is all basic functionality required to be efficient in this app, and none of it works right in the current app.

So if you’re new to this app or wanting to test it out, use a computer. Notion will not give you a full sense of what this amazing app is capable of.

I’ve tried many apps to find a place where I can create a to-do list, create a master list of my assignments, have a schedule of classes and assignments on a calendar, while keeping everything categorized and separate. Although a lot of apps do some of this things better, none of them so far have done all of these things. Enter this app.

Notion has been by far the best combination of everything I’ve been looking for. The setting up process is not as user friendly as most, but the end product is great after learning the setup. There are many interface changes i’d like to see in order to make Notion more user-friendly, therefore am looking forward to the updates.

I can see Notion being the core of a lot more users’ daily organization, tracking, and productivity very soon.

Still no option to increase text size and both light and dark modes use grey typeface which means there’a very little contrast making it extremely unfriendly to vision impaired users. Can a developer respond to this and let me know if this is on the roadmap? Text size understandably is more intensive to implement but making the dark mode a true black background with true white text and vice versa the opposite for light mode could be achieved in minutes. Thank you in advance for considering accessibility 😃
8/5/21

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I really want to permanently move to this from Evernote that I’ve paid for many years BUT the dark mode is a deal breaker at the moment. It’s more like “grayscale mode” which makes things very difficult to read sometimes because of a lack of contrast. I’m really surprised any designer would do that. PLEASE just give us true black or something much closer to black. (Same issue on MacOS app) 🖤🖤🖤

Overall, love using this app. It’s collaborative nature and the simplicity is fantastic. A few bugs that would be helpful to fix:

Private Pages and Workspace Pages can be favorited, but not shared pages. This is a really strange aspect about Shared and one of a few spots where it feels like the shared pages end up being a bit of a step child (though a very powerful tool!)

At our company we’ve also accidentally lost some top-level pages of our workspace from time to time (mostly because people accidentally delete them or move the into a private page etc…). Each time it’s happened, the version history has not been effective in searching and restoring our top-level pages (even for admins). This issue normally takes an extensive amount of time with their chat team to resolve.

I LOVE this app! After a few days of using the mobile app, it seems that mostly all the functionalities available on the Mac desktop version have been implemented in Notion well. I appreciate that you can still edit pages and formulas exactly as you would on desktop! As a mobile app it can be slightly unwieldy, and not always optimized for your screen or super aesthetic. this app has a semi-steep learning curve and if it's your first time using it, I'd recommend setting everything up/formatting your pages on desktop first and getting the hang of it that way. After you do that it's a pretty smooth ride! Love Notion, it's helped me organize my entire life – some things I didn't even know needed organising until I found this app! Highly recommend.

I love the organization that this app provides. I work as a programmer and the wiki’s you can create within this app have helped me create guides for all the nitpicking commands we have to remember. It’s also extremely useful for keeping track of To-Do’s and quick notes. I have started experimenting using it as a calendar, but this is where it really falls short. I can not specify the time of an event on this app’s calendar which sounds like a basic feature for any time-keeping application. Also, WIDGETS! I wish this app had widgets on Apple devices so I could see my created tasks and calendars. It’s really hard to make this my end-all-be-all when it also lacks support for Apple Watch. If this could be better integrated with Apple devices, it’d have my full 5-stars.

After a steep learning curve, this app has quickly become the ultimate digital planner for me. As an undergrad, it’s taking the brunt of my stress from the oncoming assignments and exams into something more manageable. I absolutely love the little customizations in adding icons and headers, and honestly, the only thing I could ask for is synchronization with Google calendars? Since a lot of my day to day events are entered through there, it’d be nice to have it somehow linked to everything else on my this app as well.

My only real complaint would be to just please let us add an option to crop and move around the header positions on Notion , but that’s mostly superficial (still tho, @ dev’s please please please add this option, ty in advance) and can be remedied by going onto the physical website on a computer.

I loved Notion from the very first day. You can do so many things with it, from to do lists, schedules, databases, bullet-journal-type spreads, and so much more, while using the same technique for everything. It is super simple and easy to use, and has so many features. You can make tables, graphs, charts, and even make a webpage out of a this app workspace.

I tried many organization apps, like Evernote, Dropbox, keep, and the notes app, but this is the most functional.

I use it to organize my entire life, from school, work, and general life improvement. Their templates make Notion easier to use, and gave me ideas on how to improve myself and track my progress. It helps me with time management since I have a busy schedule.

Even in my free time, Notion helps me improve with the templates. I don’t think this is the purpose of the templates, but I still love them 😅. They have templates like habit trackers, weekly agendas, club workspaces, reading lists, job applications, and so much more. It makes me feel like reading, building new habits, and helps me make the most out of my time.

This is by far my favorite organization/productivity app because it actually helps me get more productive.

Once I learned how to use Notion I loved it over all the other note-taking apps I’ve tried. There are so many great qualities and I think what I appreciate most is the flexibility of Notion . I also appreciate the consistency between the web app and phone app. An issue I noticed a few other reviews have mentioned that I have to agree with is the inability to select multiple rows of text. Also, you can’t change the color or highlight one specific word bc in this app you have to select the entire row to highlight. Those are my main issues. What I think would be an awesome consideration for this app is the inclusion of themes! I also use the Bear note app and I love the ability they provide to switch between themes depending on my mood.

I have had this app for a week, taken a lot of notes already and decided to become a paid customer to support a frat team behind the tool. That said, free account is likely enough for most people for quite a while. this app is the best note taking and information organization tool I know. The reason it isn’t rated higher I think is it’s not mobile-oriented. Many seem to be complaining its slow loading on phone. It does seem to be slower on phone, by one or two seconds. I use this app mainly on my computer where I can take full advantage of Notion ’s powerful array of functions. I personally don’t see how you can make best use of this app on a phone. Phone is good for reading, and taking some quick notes. Try it on a computer and see how much you can do with this app. You’ll be amazed. My search for a note taking app is over. Hopefully for you too.

I admit, I'm the sort of app user who's main skill is lurking real deep in review pages, but never actually review. I consummate the critiques of other, but never leave my own so that it may inspire others. But I'm going to change my ways. I'm going to change my ways for this app. It has done so much for me that it's not possible for me to not stand from the roof of my apartment complex in the middle of the night and shout to all my neighbors about how good Notion is. They got me from grocery shopping lists, to inventory management checklist, to bookmarking the 100 research literature I need to review before the next R&D lab meeting. I've never used an app this much. I've never loved an app this much. Dear Ivan, Brian, and Lillie - I could kiss you. If we ever break up, nothing would be the same.

this app is a good app for project management, wiki’s, teams, tracking, and more. While it is good for a lot of things, it won’t replace everything as it is now.

I am a student and tried using this app to replace MS One Note for note taking. I encountered several roadblocks for seamless note-taking. For one, it lacks the drag and drop functionality for pdf insertion. Inserting PDF’s takes several steps in this app otherwise. Viewing embedded pdf’s is good in this app. Opening pdf’s is awkward, it is initiated by selecting the option “view original” (rather than a simple double tap), and then occurs online only, rather than locally (via pdf app or device).

Another drawback is that that this app is primarily web driven, there is no saving for offline viewing. In addition, there are no security options, so saving sensitive resources or documents in this app feels risky, especially so considering it’s a server driven platform.

While I find these are drawbacks for my purposes of managing my class notes, there is a lot that this app can do better than many apps. It is probably the most versatile database app I have come across, not to mention it looks fantastic. I just wish it could be a little more functional and more secure.

If you're satisfied with Evernote (or other note-taking alternatives), then you may not care for this app. However if you're like me and have been looking for a simplistic alternative that's more compact, aesthetically-pleasing, and conducive to productivity... Then you'll probably move to this app, like I did.

The markdown that this app offers is flexible enough to suit any kind of list that you may have in mind, while remaining simple and uncluttered— ideal for notes-on-the-go/brainvomit. The free version is also robust and allows for ample markdown inserts and page creation; I didn't even need to upgrade from free to paid, but I wanted to anyway, because it's a great service.

this app also supports collaborative team documents! Though I don't use the aforementioned feature, I think it's pretty nifty all the same.

this app, as a whole, is a 10/10 product. However, on mobile the card view (Kanban) is a bit clunky, left swipe from the edge goes back instead of opening the sidebar (which you have to tap the button for, making the UX worse) and there are also no widget or quick actions available, which kills the product as a quick on-the-go tool (Notion is also slooooowww, even on my brand new iPhone 11 Pro). The worst issue is that you can only select text within your current “block”, so you can’t copy paste an entire list or multiple paragraphs, which is very annoying.

Once Notion has widgets, quick actions, and some interface refinements to make it less clunky (please let me select text that spans between blocks!!!!) it’ll be 5 stars. The only reason it’s one star is because the multi-block text selection issue makes many tasks impossible or extremely inconvenient.

It’s roughly 6 months since I first downloaded this app. 2 months on free, 4 months and counting as an annually paying user.

Why did I start paying? After watching David Pierce from WSJ showcase how he uses this app I realized I was underutilizing it’s potential. Once I created a workspace structure that worked for me and learned how to segregate workspaces for contrasting purposes I was sold.

this app is a growing platform. As you grow on it, the platform grows also with new feature releases and updates. I’m most impressed by their responsiveness to issues and solving with work arounds if their is not a direct solution in place at the moment. The more feedback they receive the better the experience going forward. Providing feedback is the least of your worries on this app. Configuration is top priority. Once configured to your liking after downloading there’s no going back.

Realistically speaking, offline mode for now works when you remain in a page, however, it’s a temporary and minor set back compared the notes app on iOS. Between desktop (preferred) and Notion (convenient) there’s nothing else I’d rather be using. Shoot your shot.

First off, let me not waste your time; Notion is crazy powerful and has the potential to be a game changer when it comes to organizing your life into one app. That much is clear. However, when it comes to tweaking the experience to fit your needs or change settings that you didn’t quite understand at first, it is horrendous.

For example, one of the only questions Notion asks during setup is what domain would you allow to join your list without an invitation. Once you set it, it doesn’t seem to allow you to delete, add, or edit it in any way, which is really odd. If this option is there, it doesn’t make itself easy to find.

While the feature of popping into a page without invite itself can allow for easy flow, the ability to segregate your lists between groups could really be helpful to separate personal lists from work groups, or even from work group to work group.

All in all, extremely powerful and clean and well executed in the basic function and core idea of Notion , however, if you want to tweak the experience or segregate your account into different compartments, Notion is found wanting and woefully inadequate.

this app very quickly became a staple of my productivity system and life. Its databases, templates, and pages-inside-pages organization structure are a one-of-a-kind approach to a personal workspace that I never knew I needed but now can’t live without.

Despite all that, I have no choice but to drop 2 stars. The performance on this iOS app is absolutely awful. I’m using an iPhone 8 and I can’t get through writing a single bullet point/paragraph after opening Notion before the keyboard is so laggy that I’ll have typed an entire sentence before the keyboard responds to the taps.

Once this app fixes this (and the few other glaring issues mentioned by other reviewers like not being able to select multiple blocks at once), I’ll be the first in line to advocate Apple to let me give this app a 6-star review.

this app is amazing! But I really hope one day they can make it able to show a page or a database as a widget in iPhone’s widgets area, which will make things much more quicker to track with! Also, it would be great to add another type of database that’s similar to a mind map, so that people can make their notes into mind map, and that’s going to be a great feature for students!

Besides that, in iOS some of the embedded files don’t work at all, the page will be just blank. For example, I linked some google docs and my google calendar, both of them were just staying blank and can only be viewed in “view original” (and sometimes that doesn’t work as well).

This is the future of productivity apps. this app hits all the right buttons. However, as a full replacement for other productivity and note taking apps, it needs a few additions. Namely, integration with browsers and email. It just isn’t there, yet, but Notion is very close.

As for what this app currently offers, the visual organization and task lists and boards are pretty outstanding. They are not yet fully developed, but they are great for light tasking and organization of all the areas in your life. Another year or so and this will have enough heft to be the dominant productivity app in your workflow.

this app is a deep app, I understand that not all features translate from Desktop to Mobile. But being able to quick add things to a database seems require functionality. If I have a tabled task list, I can’t just quickly enter the name of a task, hit enter, and move on to the next new task like on the Desktop. Rather, it open’s the new page dialog, which you then have to use breadcrumb navigation to get back to your page. So multiple clicks to just add a single item. I could use a checklist, but I can do that in Bear. I came to this app for power. Using force touch might be a good way around this? Single tap lets you edit the name directly, but force touching opens the new page dialog?

Swipe/gesture navigation is also sorely needed, as breadcrumbs/menu are slow when navigating around.

First off, this app is the future and I’m committed to it. That said, in its current state, it’s not for everyone. As a previous reviewer mentioned, there is a frustrating bug that prevents selecting all text on a page. In addition, it doesn’t appear to provide an alerting functionality for deadlines on to-dos.

Outside of those bugs, it’s a brilliant, true cross-platform application that provides exactly what’s advertised. I’ve been relying on pen and paper for at least 12 months now to resolve exactly this problem: planning, to dos and notes should live in one workspace, like they did for most of us before the age of the smartphone

Loved it at first, but the iOS version is really lacking. Recently I lost all my notes I was taking offline and now when I try to open Notion I just see a completely gray screen. I need a reliable app for mobile and offline editing so I will not be using this app moving forward. I really loved Notion at first and was excited about the functionality and organization but reliability and access to my notes is my top priority - I hope they focus on fixing the basics before adding more shiny functions.

Also the select all functionality on iOS is frustrating. You can’t select all to copy/paste something from your notes. Notion only allows you to select a single bullet or a text section but if you have breaks in your text, you need to select each independently.

Download Notion and give it a try. Play with it, test it out and see if you like it. If you don’t get what they’re trying to do, don’t delete it, just set it off to the side and come back to it at a later time. It’s a bit complicated but once you get it you won’t be able to live without it. I gave Notion a try and had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. I played around with it and didn’t touch it for almost a year. Besides Safari and maybe Facebook, this app is now my most used app. My entire life is organized with it and I probably haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do.