Notion for everyone(notion.so)
notion.so
Notion for everyone
https://www.notion.so/personal
462 comments
I've tried to use Notion, but my experience mirrors yours:
There's just enough flexibility to slow you down, but not enough flexibility to make it down exactly what I need without jumping through a lot of hoops.
My favorite productivity tools blend into the background. I can get down to doing the work without mental overhead of managing the tool. Notion, on the other hand, feels like I'm spending half of my energy fighting with Notion, and only half of my energy doing the work I'm trying to accomplish.
There's just enough flexibility to slow you down, but not enough flexibility to make it down exactly what I need without jumping through a lot of hoops.
My favorite productivity tools blend into the background. I can get down to doing the work without mental overhead of managing the tool. Notion, on the other hand, feels like I'm spending half of my energy fighting with Notion, and only half of my energy doing the work I'm trying to accomplish.
> There's just enough flexibility to slow you down, but not enough flexibility to make it down exactly what I need without jumping through a lot of hoops.
This reads as if you except Notion to give you meaningful work to do, a workflow you can follow? Or do you just don't know how to implement the workflows you envision yourself?
This reads as if you except Notion to give you meaningful work to do, a workflow you can follow? Or do you just don't know how to implement the workflows you envision yourself?
I’ve had a similar experience with Notion. “Jack of all trades and master of none” resonates strongly with me.
This lead me to my latest startup https://froosthq.com/ which is Notion inspired and aimed solely at software teams.
This lead me to my latest startup https://froosthq.com/ which is Notion inspired and aimed solely at software teams.
Funnily enough originaly the saying was "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." Seems like it got pretty skewed over time.
Specialization is for insects.
https://wiki.c2.com/?SpecializationIsForInsects
https://wiki.c2.com/?SpecializationIsForInsects
And also what allowed civilisation to exist.
I really like the jetbrains solution to this problem.
https://www.jetbrains.com/space/
Does this product "exist" yet or is it vaporware we're putting our email addresses in for? Page seems very light on info or even pricing.
The product exists indeed and it’s very stable. Been out there for years.
I would rephrase "all in one tool" to more specific like "project management tool". All in one for software teams makes me think that you also offer things like version control etc. All-in-one is a very loaded phrase. Just my 2 cents.
Hey, just noticed a small mistake, or it was just unclear from my side. Looks like the "pricing" link links to "learn" in the url, while there being nothing about pricing in the page itself.
Imo github is eventually going to subsume all of this activity. People don’t want to go to more than one place.
wanted to add my email but the console reports "mailchimp ajax submit error: error"
Thanks for letting me know, will take a look now. If you want to drop me an email “josh@ the website above” then I’ll add you to the list.
Looks great, signed up!
Notion recently published "How Notion Uses Notion" [0] which I found insightful in terms of how Notion's flexibility is put to work internally.
It's interesting seeing where teams hit the limits of the tool & wish for (or move to) something else though. I wonder if "The Notion Way" will emerge at some point, which would be useful for quickly qualifying yourself in or out.
[0] https://www.notion.so/How-Notion-Uses-Notion-616f41d2f5124f3...
It's interesting seeing where teams hit the limits of the tool & wish for (or move to) something else though. I wonder if "The Notion Way" will emerge at some point, which would be useful for quickly qualifying yourself in or out.
[0] https://www.notion.so/How-Notion-Uses-Notion-616f41d2f5124f3...
This is great, thanks for sharing
I've found Notion really worthwhile, but the fact it's so flexible means you need to go in with a plan so that you can really take advantage of it.
I really like how Marie Poulin's sets up her Notion process, here's a good example of how to make contextual dashboards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX2AJD4kx80 but there's a bunch more, just massive productivity boosts from not having to jump between so many different apps/services.
I really like how Marie Poulin's sets up her Notion process, here's a good example of how to make contextual dashboards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX2AJD4kx80 but there's a bunch more, just massive productivity boosts from not having to jump between so many different apps/services.
Also, the whole Emoji's thing is distracting to me. I just want to see plain text in simple san-serif fonts, with borders (which are apparently outdated in favor of massive emptiness of negative space).
Visual cognitive load is ok as far as the brain can process blocks of information. Such as a table with borders. When you have emojis, colors, effects, etc without clarity of separation, you get something that becomes tiring after a little while to look at.
Visual cognitive load is ok as far as the brain can process blocks of information. Such as a table with borders. When you have emojis, colors, effects, etc without clarity of separation, you get something that becomes tiring after a little while to look at.
That's funny. One time while converting a prototype to less of a prototype, I created like 40 PRs in 40 working days. There were so many in-flight at one time that I couldn't really use normal issue trackers. Instead I created one GitHub issue with a table of items. Each item had an emoji in the first column that indicated its current status. The gear was 'in-progress', 'eyes' review, 'ship' deploying, and green check for done. I didn't know how many lines there would be, I started out with about 6 and it worked exceedingly well. If anyone ever asked me what I was working on or where I was with it, I just sent them the one issue link and they had the whole history and the near future listed.
I called it Emoji-Driven-Development.
I called it Emoji-Driven-Development.
lmao this sounds insane. I fully admit and recognize - I like reading tax forms :-|. The more old school, the better. Give me docs set in Times New Roman, all this frivolous stuff is giving me a headache. Now...where is my walnut cane and financial times set in orange paper?
Please link me the github issue so I can make use of a bottle of kerosene I've got left from 1940's gas lamp.
Please link me the github issue so I can make use of a bottle of kerosene I've got left from 1940's gas lamp.
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That's funny, because to me, the emoji seem like a nice visual differentiator and borders seem hideous.
Borders are timeless, they've been around before the internet and to be around forever. Literally a line in the whitespace that allows your eye balls to know that hey! that's block A and that's block B and there is a fricking line in the middle!
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> how it's flexibility is also a problem many times.
Flexibility is always a challenge, but in case of Notion IMHO the bigger challange is getting over it's aweful userexperience and interface. And flexibility is not always a problem. Excel proofs that flexibel solution can succeed with the laymen.
> 1. Flexibility of blocks is a cognitive overhead for most folks in my team. They would rather prefer more constrained and opinionated approaches like Trello
Is this not solved with their Template-Library? Those deliver a guided opinionated experience. Though it's not as constrained and powerful as a specialized app like Trello.
> 2. Notion is currently a jack of all trades and master of none.
It's a canvas-tool. You get a set of brushs and pencils and it's up on you to paint what you need. This has naturally advantage for some and disadvantages for some others.
> 3. Convention over configuration creates problems for other team members to follow because conventions are not documented properly
Is Notion a team-tool? Do they advertise it as such?
> But I see a lot of potential of it becoming a platform. If they can incentivize 3rd parties to build over their platform and build trust, I think it's gonna be the next big thing. "One platform for all my data" with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data.
There are far better soltions around for this. I doubt this is a sane endgoal for notion.
Flexibility is always a challenge, but in case of Notion IMHO the bigger challange is getting over it's aweful userexperience and interface. And flexibility is not always a problem. Excel proofs that flexibel solution can succeed with the laymen.
> 1. Flexibility of blocks is a cognitive overhead for most folks in my team. They would rather prefer more constrained and opinionated approaches like Trello
Is this not solved with their Template-Library? Those deliver a guided opinionated experience. Though it's not as constrained and powerful as a specialized app like Trello.
> 2. Notion is currently a jack of all trades and master of none.
It's a canvas-tool. You get a set of brushs and pencils and it's up on you to paint what you need. This has naturally advantage for some and disadvantages for some others.
> 3. Convention over configuration creates problems for other team members to follow because conventions are not documented properly
Is Notion a team-tool? Do they advertise it as such?
> But I see a lot of potential of it becoming a platform. If they can incentivize 3rd parties to build over their platform and build trust, I think it's gonna be the next big thing. "One platform for all my data" with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data.
There are far better soltions around for this. I doubt this is a sane endgoal for notion.
Good points. It seems you might enjoy Fibery[1], it addresses most of these problems (and has internal whiteboard as draw.io replacement as well). But I’m biased as a Fibery founder.
[1] https://fibery.io
[1] https://fibery.io
This is amazing. I really am sold on your self-depreciating humor.
https://fibery.io/anxiety
https://fibery.io/anxiety
That button "I don't get it..." at the bottom right is genius.
your site looks amazing and the I don't get it button is really great.
But... even after looking at all the four separate landing pages I have no idea what exactly fibery could do for me
But... even after looking at all the four separate landing pages I have no idea what exactly fibery could do for me
We'll re-do the product page with the Fibery 2.0 release somewhere in July. Thanks for the feedback!
Same. I wish everything wasn't so zoomed in so I didn't have to read heaps of large headers and scroll for ages to figure out what exactly it does.
BTW, Here is the detailed review Fibery vs. Notion (longread) [1].
[1] https://medium.com/fibery/fibery-vs-notion-66019dd91846
[1] https://medium.com/fibery/fibery-vs-notion-66019dd91846
This looks amazing. Just reading over the docs before I dive in.
Yup, Notion and OneNote occupy similar scenarios for me. It's where I can gather my compiled thoughts and notes, but I've had trouble implementing any team processes on it due to it not being constrained enough in its UI.
I don't think there's any easy answer here. I respect the Notion team a lot for making a tool that is so flexible, but it's also a curse in some key scenarios.
I don't think there's any easy answer here. I respect the Notion team a lot for making a tool that is so flexible, but it's also a curse in some key scenarios.
Yeah. I see that it works great for some scenarios, like when I and my co-founder are collaborating. But if I try to teach it to a sales guy, I can see he just hates it :(
Perhaps a wiki or internal QA site would be a good solution.
I am really surprised no one has mentioned https://zenkit.com/. Kanban - Wiki - Calendar - List - Mindmap - Hierarchy etc. It does those things very well.
Probably because it seems to be less known than Notion. IIRC it's a bit more expensive and more constrainend than notion, more targeted at teams than single users.
I really liked it first impression UI lets see how it goes. Thanks for the share.
Is data removable, do you use?
I use it for personal purpose. By data removable, I guess you mean right to be forgotten. Their https://zenkit.com/en/gdpr/ page provides the details.
I feel like Dropbox Paper strikes a great balance. If you drop certain links in a Paper doc, like a Figma or Google Docs Spreadsheet, it will show either an iframe or screenshot read-only representation of the current content with a link to it.
My only beef with Dropbox Paper is their iOS apps are buggy as hell and have been for a few years. I really wish they’d invest more in their native apps.
My only beef with Dropbox Paper is their iOS apps are buggy as hell and have been for a few years. I really wish they’d invest more in their native apps.
+1 for Dropbox Paper. I am weirdly addicted to it for all my internal documentation and writeups. When you get used to (and expect) the guardrails, it's so fast to quick create a doc with multi-media.
My only pain point is the damn file system
My only pain point is the damn file system
Agreed. It seems especially weird that, after moving files into a folder, they still appear in the main list.
That, and the fact that new files are world-readable by default. (With unguessable URLs, but still...)
That, and the fact that new files are world-readable by default. (With unguessable URLs, but still...)
Ran into the same issue. Loved the design and the demos I saw so I signed up.
What I really wanted was just a simple flexible to-do list, something that I missed from Basecamp v1 and was willing to try somewhere else.
But the flexibility made it a nightmare. Because what I wanted was very simple, the friction that I encountered, though probably not huge, felt much larger, because I felt, why can't this be easier? I just want a simple to do list, and I was messing with headings and all of this non-essential stuff that I didn't need.
I'm sure in a business setting it could be different, especially if someone goes through the trouble of setting things up so you have some sort of system of consistency that you work inside of, but as a first time user the flexibility was a bit of hinderance.
What I really wanted was just a simple flexible to-do list, something that I missed from Basecamp v1 and was willing to try somewhere else.
But the flexibility made it a nightmare. Because what I wanted was very simple, the friction that I encountered, though probably not huge, felt much larger, because I felt, why can't this be easier? I just want a simple to do list, and I was messing with headings and all of this non-essential stuff that I didn't need.
I'm sure in a business setting it could be different, especially if someone goes through the trouble of setting things up so you have some sort of system of consistency that you work inside of, but as a first time user the flexibility was a bit of hinderance.
I can totally relate to this. I often feel that with all these "simplistic" products coming out they actually oversimplify it to the point where it actually takes longer to do. It is great to have the flexibility and all, but where do we draw the line from being too flexible or too simplified? Like you, I ran into the same issues with Notion, so I switched to Trello, but it has some lack of features that I really wanted. I've been searching the web to find team chats that particularly don't require too much integration, and is simple. Especially with task management. I've been seeing a lot of mentions about AirSend on twitter, and I checked out their website. They have a really simple to-do list that is built-in. My team and I just started using it last week, and so far I don't have too many complaints. Not sure if you are looking for a switch, but you might like them. I hope this helps! Their website is, AirSend.io
long time notion user here. I was using notion for my personal life and it was serving the purpose but when I started using it as a project management tool for my dev team I realised how crippled it is (no dependent tasks, gantt view etc). maybe I'm wrong and notion is not built for this but then again why would i use it just for wiki? recently started looking for task management+wiki tool.. reviewed more than 10+ tools and finally picked an extremely powerful but a less known tool clickup.com
Can't agree more. I was using Notion from the very beta start and loved it. Then couples of months in I strated noticing that the more Notion added features the more I was spending more time "perfecting" my workspace than doing actual work.
Stopped using it and went back to old good Google Sheets, Apple Notes. Very constrained and just the right amount of "flexibility" to make it work for you workflow. No emojis encouragements.
Stopped using it and went back to old good Google Sheets, Apple Notes. Very constrained and just the right amount of "flexibility" to make it work for you workflow. No emojis encouragements.
Regarding your first point, totally agree 100%.
I want to use notion, it's such a nice UI/UX. Problem is, it's just too complicated.
Trello is basic, but gets the job done.
I want to use notion, it's such a nice UI/UX. Problem is, it's just too complicated.
Trello is basic, but gets the job done.
Same here. I was so overwhelmed with the million ways I could accomplish my relatively simple needs that I just gave up on it. Also everything basically bringing up a modal for a new page annoyed me. Maybe it's just my personality type but I like there just being a canonical way of doing something and then doing it, rather than spending a fair chunk of time customising and configuring the tool to do what I want.
This was exactly our issue. Not good at any one thing and the interface is very touch. A single mis-click and you can mess things up which reminds me Asana.
What all these platforms really need is solid APIs and interoperability so we can use the right tool while keeping everything in one place (ideally email or slack).
What all these platforms really need is solid APIs and interoperability so we can use the right tool while keeping everything in one place (ideally email or slack).
I really need a better index of all my notes, right now it's just too overwhelming without a better way of organizing everything, especially since it automatically collapses all my workspace trees when I close the app. Really gets in the way of using it beyond a handful of pages.
“One platform for all my data with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data. I can imagine tools like Tello, Jira, Hubspot, Google spreadsheets & draw.io running over it.”
-> https://qatalog.com
-> https://qatalog.com
that is really neat! but what apps can I connect to it? It says 9 providers but can’t see what they are
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I miss Trello: add task, edit, save.
Can anyone explain to me why Trello is so popular? I'm serious; I honestly don't get it.
If I want to track tasks, I just make a Google Spreadsheet with a row for each task. This scales up easily to a hundred tasks or so, and it's straightforward to filter on a column to focus on particular categories or statuses. In Trello, I can see maybe 30 cards max before my screen space is all used up, and I spend so much time hunting around for cards. If a card has moved, I have to just read linearly through all the cards to find the one I'm looking for. I could use the search box, but that only pops up the detail window for the card; it doesn't show me where the card is in context.
Trello is like a task spreadsheet where you can only see a small amount of information at once, it's really hard to find tasks, you can't add custom columns, you can't colour-code things the way you want, you can't add tabs, you can't add formulas to do simple things like addition, you can't see previous versions, and on and on.
So why would you use Trello when you could use a Google Spreadsheet and get things done twice as fast? Does the whole product exist only because people like the cute little animation of picking up the tilty little cards and dragging them to other columns?
If I want to track tasks, I just make a Google Spreadsheet with a row for each task. This scales up easily to a hundred tasks or so, and it's straightforward to filter on a column to focus on particular categories or statuses. In Trello, I can see maybe 30 cards max before my screen space is all used up, and I spend so much time hunting around for cards. If a card has moved, I have to just read linearly through all the cards to find the one I'm looking for. I could use the search box, but that only pops up the detail window for the card; it doesn't show me where the card is in context.
Trello is like a task spreadsheet where you can only see a small amount of information at once, it's really hard to find tasks, you can't add custom columns, you can't colour-code things the way you want, you can't add tabs, you can't add formulas to do simple things like addition, you can't see previous versions, and on and on.
So why would you use Trello when you could use a Google Spreadsheet and get things done twice as fast? Does the whole product exist only because people like the cute little animation of picking up the tilty little cards and dragging them to other columns?
> Can anyone explain to me why Trello is so popular? I'm serious; I honestly don't get it.
It's sleek, powerful, constrained and optimized for it's single purpose, while still remain flexibel enough to give space. Also scales up nice for multiple users, from 2+, teams, 2+ departments and even whole companies or even more. And it also works on most platforms effortless.
> If I want to track tasks, I just make a Google Spreadsheet with a row for each task.
That reads horrible. How do you manage richtext with Spreadsheet? Links? Pictures? How do you collaborate with others? How does this get automated and integrate with other systems? How do you get a sane overview of the state of your tasks and projects? Sure, more or less all possible, but not on the level of quality you get from a specialized and over a long time optimized solution. And you need to invest the time to build this all first.
> So why would you use Trello when you could use a Google Spreadsheet and get things done twice as fast?
More like ten times slower.
It's sleek, powerful, constrained and optimized for it's single purpose, while still remain flexibel enough to give space. Also scales up nice for multiple users, from 2+, teams, 2+ departments and even whole companies or even more. And it also works on most platforms effortless.
> If I want to track tasks, I just make a Google Spreadsheet with a row for each task.
That reads horrible. How do you manage richtext with Spreadsheet? Links? Pictures? How do you collaborate with others? How does this get automated and integrate with other systems? How do you get a sane overview of the state of your tasks and projects? Sure, more or less all possible, but not on the level of quality you get from a specialized and over a long time optimized solution. And you need to invest the time to build this all first.
> So why would you use Trello when you could use a Google Spreadsheet and get things done twice as fast?
More like ten times slower.
How do you find cards? That's what really gets in the way for me.
How do you manage hundreds of cards? Dragging each card one at a time takes forever. If you want to make a change to a bunch of cards, do you open each card, edit it, close it, open the next card, etc. -- doesn't that take ages? Isn't it frustrating not being able to just drag 20 rows of a spreadsheet at once, or paste/format 20 cells at once?
> How do you get a sane overview of the state of your tasks and projects?
How do you get an overview when you can't see anything? In Trello I feel like I'm blind -- all the cards are scrolling off the bottom of the screen and the columns are off to the right. Instead of a single line of text maybe 20 pixels high, every card is a stack of labels, dates, a few lines of text, little icons and profile avatars. The minimal card is 100 or more pixels high, which means that only about 5 to 8 cards will fit vertically with all the other detritus packed into the UI.
How about an objective metric: in a given column of your Trello board, what fraction of the column can you see at once? Like what percentage of the vertical scrollbar track is the draggable part? For me it's about 5 to 10%.
How do you manage hundreds of cards? Dragging each card one at a time takes forever. If you want to make a change to a bunch of cards, do you open each card, edit it, close it, open the next card, etc. -- doesn't that take ages? Isn't it frustrating not being able to just drag 20 rows of a spreadsheet at once, or paste/format 20 cells at once?
> How do you get a sane overview of the state of your tasks and projects?
How do you get an overview when you can't see anything? In Trello I feel like I'm blind -- all the cards are scrolling off the bottom of the screen and the columns are off to the right. Instead of a single line of text maybe 20 pixels high, every card is a stack of labels, dates, a few lines of text, little icons and profile avatars. The minimal card is 100 or more pixels high, which means that only about 5 to 8 cards will fit vertically with all the other detritus packed into the UI.
How about an objective metric: in a given column of your Trello board, what fraction of the column can you see at once? Like what percentage of the vertical scrollbar track is the draggable part? For me it's about 5 to 10%.
I like Trello A LOT have like 30 different boards with probably thousands of cards.
Why Trello over Sheets?
I use Trello as basically a really extensible digital kanban board.
It also makes easier to associate tasks with each other add extra context (for instance if I'm keeping track of some long form context associated with a task where would you put that in sheets? A note? Can you search those? Once it gets really long a Google doc? I guess).
Also can add custom fields. I used this to allow me to add weights to cards so they automatically rearrange in priority order.
I even have boards that serve as a personal knowledge base.
I feel like Trello gives you really great free reign to discover a process for things and have it evolve over time.
Could you accomplish that with sheets? Probably but not as elegantly and definitely not with a UI
Why Trello over Sheets?
I use Trello as basically a really extensible digital kanban board.
It also makes easier to associate tasks with each other add extra context (for instance if I'm keeping track of some long form context associated with a task where would you put that in sheets? A note? Can you search those? Once it gets really long a Google doc? I guess).
Also can add custom fields. I used this to allow me to add weights to cards so they automatically rearrange in priority order.
I even have boards that serve as a personal knowledge base.
I feel like Trello gives you really great free reign to discover a process for things and have it evolve over time.
Could you accomplish that with sheets? Probably but not as elegantly and definitely not with a UI
You are right that a spreadsheet gets more information on the screen, but Trello's kanban layout really highlights which task is "where" (in what state).
I've often used it with clients to let them know which high-level features are in progress, which are done, etc. It has also worked really well for collaborative trip planning. Both of these workflows benefit from cards with cover images too.
It's not a replacement for a company-wide knowledge base or an issue tracker for hundreds of tickets.
I've often used it with clients to let them know which high-level features are in progress, which are done, etc. It has also worked really well for collaborative trip planning. Both of these workflows benefit from cards with cover images too.
It's not a replacement for a company-wide knowledge base or an issue tracker for hundreds of tickets.
All the stuff you mentioned is not important when you’re collaborating on a project with others. Addition? Version control? Lol. Whatever.
Just because you don’t understand why people use Trello does not mean everyone’s a frivolous idiot.
What do you guys do for a living? Not a joke question.
Just because you don’t understand why people use Trello does not mean everyone’s a frivolous idiot.
What do you guys do for a living? Not a joke question.
GitHub more or less offers this in the Projects board feature:
https://help.github.com/en/github/managing-your-work-on-gith...
https://help.github.com/en/github/managing-your-work-on-gith...
Folks who have used both Trello and gh Projects, how does Projects compare?
gh Projects
Pro:
- Integrated with GitHub issues
Con:
- Can not move card to other board
- No import/export
- No themes
- No change background image
- Only basic automation of moving cards to Done list etc
Trello
Pro:
- Can move card/list to other boards
- Export to JSON
- GitHub Power-Up for GitHub integration
- Butler for automating, in English
- Themes
- Change background image
- API
Con:
- Only SaaS, can not self-host, not Open Source
- No Swimlanes
- Export to CSV needs paid account
- No Import from JSON/CSV on free version web UI
Wekan https://wekan.github.io
Pro:
- Open Source, can self-host on x64, RasPi3/4 etc
- Import from Trello JSON cards/lists/checlists/attachments/labels/votes
- Import CSV, currently importing custom fields in progress of being added
- Import from Wekan JSON including attachments
- Export CSV, currently exporting custom fields in progress of being added
- Export Wekan JSON including attachments
- IFTTT Rules wizard has translations, but less rules than similar Trello Butler
- Swimlanes
- Themes
- Gogs integration https://github.com/wekan/wekan-gogs
- API, Outgoing Webhooks per board, Global Webhooks at admin panel of (nearly) all board actions
Con:
- Not integrated with GitHub yet
- No move list to other board yet
- No change background image yet
Pro:
- Integrated with GitHub issues
Con:
- Can not move card to other board
- No import/export
- No themes
- No change background image
- Only basic automation of moving cards to Done list etc
Trello
Pro:
- Can move card/list to other boards
- Export to JSON
- GitHub Power-Up for GitHub integration
- Butler for automating, in English
- Themes
- Change background image
- API
Con:
- Only SaaS, can not self-host, not Open Source
- No Swimlanes
- Export to CSV needs paid account
- No Import from JSON/CSV on free version web UI
Wekan https://wekan.github.io
Pro:
- Open Source, can self-host on x64, RasPi3/4 etc
- Import from Trello JSON cards/lists/checlists/attachments/labels/votes
- Import CSV, currently importing custom fields in progress of being added
- Import from Wekan JSON including attachments
- Export CSV, currently exporting custom fields in progress of being added
- Export Wekan JSON including attachments
- IFTTT Rules wizard has translations, but less rules than similar Trello Butler
- Swimlanes
- Themes
- Gogs integration https://github.com/wekan/wekan-gogs
- API, Outgoing Webhooks per board, Global Webhooks at admin panel of (nearly) all board actions
Con:
- Not integrated with GitHub yet
- No move list to other board yet
- No change background image yet
Less clunky in my opinion if you use it for software development because you can link it to issues / PRs and automate based on that
Trello… still exists?
Only on HN can people question the existence of an app which has 50M users. Trello might not be this month's flavor but I'll be damned if it's not one of the most useful planning tools out there.
I think tommoor is aware that Trello still exists, I read it as them questioning parent comment's phrasing "miss Trello"
I don't know how Trello has 50M users, and how so many people and companies can use it for project management. For anything more than a single board, I find it terribly lacking in functionality. Can't even see all your cards across boards without scrolling 50 times.
Using Trello well requires you to ruthlessly process cards. Once they start to "overflow" it becomes a nightmare
Lots of folks would argue that's a feature that exposes a problem in the conceptualization and modeling of a domain.
Well then they’re something wrong with you and your understanding of what people want in software. Can you link an app that you’ve made that people actually use?
> Only on HN can people question the existence of an app which has 50M users
1. GP isn't doing this. You misunderstood. 2. Even if they were(they weren't), how would this be something exclusive to HN?
1. GP isn't doing this. You misunderstood. 2. Even if they were(they weren't), how would this be something exclusive to HN?
It will soon be dead as Atlassian have started to kill it. For example, it now quite often now does browser page refresh when I open a card to add a comment. WTF ATLASSIAN!
Sounds like the curse of Emacs.
The curse of emacs is "Jack of all trades and master of ones that don't attract new users"
I am a 10yr+ Emacs user, this hit too close to home than I would like! I am seeing a lot of momentum in Emacs ecosystem for last couple of years and Spacemacs rocks! So hopefully it's gonna get better :)
Spacemacs is still alive? I tried it some years ago and it had several problem at the time. Does not seems have solved them yet.
Certainly is, though slowly but surely you zero in on the "best configuration" for yourself. Whereas when I was using vscode, onenote, google keep, and a bunch of other shit to manage everything, I had "topped out" at productivity.
I'm trash at vim (I use evil-mode), org mode, and org-agenda, but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools.
I'm trash at vim (I use evil-mode), org mode, and org-agenda, but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools.
> I had "topped out" at productivity.
Did you topped out the tool or your personal ability?
> but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools.
But is this because of the tools, the gain of new experiences or the 2 years difference?
And how do you know whether you are really moved forward, and not just run in circles appearing busy without being more productive? Do you have some objective metric for this?
Did you topped out the tool or your personal ability?
> but I'm still lightyears ahead of where I was 2 years ago before I used these tools.
But is this because of the tools, the gain of new experiences or the 2 years difference?
And how do you know whether you are really moved forward, and not just run in circles appearing busy without being more productive? Do you have some objective metric for this?
> Did you topped out the tool or your personal ability
Both, I'd say.
> Do you have some objective metric for this?
Well my happiness, for one. My sense of accomplishment. How much more I can fit in a day. But no, I don't KPI myself.
Both, I'd say.
> Do you have some objective metric for this?
Well my happiness, for one. My sense of accomplishment. How much more I can fit in a day. But no, I don't KPI myself.
I just started using orgmode to compliment notion. So far it feels to me as Notion is a bit like emacs / orgmode without API, and orgmode is a bit like notion without collaboration.
There is orgmode for web:
https://org-web.org
https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web
https://org-web.org
https://github.com/DanielDe/org-web
> orgmode is a bit like notion without collaboration
Emacs has a number of collaborative editing solutions: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CollaborativeEditing
The nice thing about org-mode is that it automatically gets all the cool stuff that emacs has. (Although, I have never tried any of the solutions listed in that wiki page and I suspect even the "working" ones have issues).
Emacs has a number of collaborative editing solutions: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CollaborativeEditing
The nice thing about org-mode is that it automatically gets all the cool stuff that emacs has. (Although, I have never tried any of the solutions listed in that wiki page and I suspect even the "working" ones have issues).
A meaningful and working integration with Airtable will help both products leap forward. Each is good at what they do.
Notion is great, I used to want to build my knowledge base in it, but figured it's not future-proof enough for my needs.
And that's part of the reason we went on to build Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/), the local-first knowledge base app. Everything is in plain text Markdown.
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/zof4zCj.png
Just released 0.6.0 and here's a video for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAkJMHg-dGw
The private beta community has built cool stuff already: https://github.com/kmaasrud/awesome-obsidian
In private beta right now, looking to launch soon.
And that's part of the reason we went on to build Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/), the local-first knowledge base app. Everything is in plain text Markdown.
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/zof4zCj.png
Just released 0.6.0 and here's a video for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAkJMHg-dGw
The private beta community has built cool stuff already: https://github.com/kmaasrud/awesome-obsidian
In private beta right now, looking to launch soon.
I like the idea of Notion, but one of things keeping me is that it seems like it'd be a pain to export one's data if Notion ever went out of business.
But just keeping folders of Markdown notes is also inflexible, but on the opposite side of the scale.
Obsidian looks like a great balance! I've requested beta access as well.
Edit: Obsidian seems to make it easy to create a Zettelkasten, sort of like https://github.com/alefore/weblog/blob/master/zettelkasten.m... but with automation baked in.
But just keeping folders of Markdown notes is also inflexible, but on the opposite side of the scale.
Obsidian looks like a great balance! I've requested beta access as well.
Edit: Obsidian seems to make it easy to create a Zettelkasten, sort of like https://github.com/alefore/weblog/blob/master/zettelkasten.m... but with automation baked in.
Notion has HTML as well as CSV+Md. I export once a month and it appears to work ok.
I switched from OneNote to Notion a while a go, one major reason being the possibility to easily export notes in Markdown format. I think it's working pretty well, or am I overlooking something?
Notion's export used to dump it all in one opaque blob of files with no structure aside from some CSV files that roughly described where things went. Maybe they haven't used it since Notion changed it to use folders.
Sounds like org-mode or vim-wiki would be up your alley. This appears to be quite similar but with a modern interface and probably better prebaked configs.
I've been using Obsidian. It's obviously still a work in progress, but it's pretty good already. The killer feature for me is that I don't need to put my data in someone else's cloud. Hoping for basic outlining features. That would make it a superapp.
I've been using Obsidian since 0.4.x and I absolutely love it. You can see the love and passion from the developers and I really want to see what it transforms into. Thanks for your commitment.
Nifty!
I just placed in a beta request.
A business partner and I heavily prefer to utilize markdown for note taking (we generally use Typora) but this poses problems when we are trying to colaborate on a document together.
Does Obsidian support real time collaborative editing?
I just placed in a beta request.
A business partner and I heavily prefer to utilize markdown for note taking (we generally use Typora) but this poses problems when we are trying to colaborate on a document together.
Does Obsidian support real time collaborative editing?
Thanks for the interest!
Not yet, currently most of our users bring their own sync (Dropbox etc.), so if you edit the same document in real time that might create conflict copies.
We're working on a sync service with end-to-end encryption (for convenience, completely optional), and we might improve it to support real-time collaboration in the future.
Not yet, currently most of our users bring their own sync (Dropbox etc.), so if you edit the same document in real time that might create conflict copies.
We're working on a sync service with end-to-end encryption (for convenience, completely optional), and we might improve it to support real-time collaboration in the future.
I just tried the beta. Beautifully done @erica
I signed up for the private beta, it looks really cool! Looking forward to it.
Writing my things in markdown is something I always wanted to do but found sorta difficult to manage in day to day scenarios. Obsidian got me crazy excited, just placed an request for beta access!
This looks exactly like what I've been looking for for ages. Does it support MathJax of some sort?
Yep! Block math is already supported and inline math is coming very soon.
That's perfect. I've applied for the waitlist. Looking forward to trying it.
Other than being local-first, how is this different than roam?
Obsidian uses Markdown, and is not an outliner.
This is kinda weird, because I was happily giving them $4/month after running out of space in their trial plan, and now I absolutely have no reason to keep giving them money.
Which, sure, I guess I'll take it. My $4/month isn't going to make or break their business and they probably barely give a shit about getting money for personal usage. Does remind me that my usage of their app doesn't align with their business model, which makes it feel rather... tenuous? Like at any time they might say "actually we're going to only support paid enterprise usage now" or "oh we're shutting down because companies just used Confluence and Airtable instead" (I have yet to sell any employer on using Notion because it's too unstructured for them to grok the benefits of :\).
Which, sure, I guess I'll take it. My $4/month isn't going to make or break their business and they probably barely give a shit about getting money for personal usage. Does remind me that my usage of their app doesn't align with their business model, which makes it feel rather... tenuous? Like at any time they might say "actually we're going to only support paid enterprise usage now" or "oh we're shutting down because companies just used Confluence and Airtable instead" (I have yet to sell any employer on using Notion because it's too unstructured for them to grok the benefits of :\).
Github just did the same thing! It’s because the math works like this: They’d need 1,000 people to pay them $4 to match a single enterprise company paying them $4k/mo. So they just need one of those 1,000 people to bring Notion into their company, and they’re ahead. If they get 10, they’re way ahead. (This is slightly simplified, of course)
Don't overlook the importance of the economy. It's tough to get individual customers to pay $4/month for a service like this in a good economy. (They were already giving it away to academics, which will never be a lucrative market.) I wouldn't want to be selling Notion to individuals in an economy like this.
This is exactly what I did. Free student user. When I started working at a new company, and they wanted to modernise internal knowledge tools, I recommended Notion. Fingers crossed it gets traction.
I never thought about it in this way, very interesting and super logical actually.
This is exactly how freemium in b2b SaaS works. The free plan is a marketing tool to drive awareness and adoption.
More than that, because account management and dealing with billing problems is not free.
The impressive thing here is that it's (sadly) pretty rare for a company to actively cease a revenue stream and think of the longer term benefits.
GitHub and Notion are two recently examples, but for every one I see in the market, I can point to at least 10 that failed to take the obvious action.
GitHub and Notion are two recently examples, but for every one I see in the market, I can point to at least 10 that failed to take the obvious action.
In Github's case I feel like it helps that they have Microsoft backing them up. MS is much more used to this model, I imagine they make a ton more off enterprise licensing then they do off individually sold ones.
Exactly. After reading this Notion going free news.. My initial reaction is "the Github way".
In any case, thank you for explaining math behind.
I too was happily paying for my personal plan.
Recently they have been hiring aggressively and expanding their templates for specific use cases. Coming from a cynical HN perspective, this looks like another promising startup falling into the vicious cycle of using VC money to fund hyper growth.
However their founder Ivan Zhao has been outspoken about not taking more VC money than necessary, and creating sustainable growth. So for now I'm approaching this news with cautious optimism.
Recently they have been hiring aggressively and expanding their templates for specific use cases. Coming from a cynical HN perspective, this looks like another promising startup falling into the vicious cycle of using VC money to fund hyper growth.
However their founder Ivan Zhao has been outspoken about not taking more VC money than necessary, and creating sustainable growth. So for now I'm approaching this news with cautious optimism.
I share your cynicism on this. Good chance this is a play to drastically boost numbers to court a big company for an exit. Not a bad idea if that keeps the product alive since it seems to be very loved in the world of productivity apps.
Also, I find it interesting that they're working on an API. A lot of organizing products lack integrations and this might open to door to sync items between Office, GSuite, fitness applications and other services for life management.
Also, I find it interesting that they're working on an API. A lot of organizing products lack integrations and this might open to door to sync items between Office, GSuite, fitness applications and other services for life management.
Knowing their aversion to VC in their history, I had the opposite reaction — this feels like a play to boost raw user count in order to attract an investor.
Notion just raised $50M. I don't think they need to boost anything to attract anybody.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup...
Are there any open source Notion alternatives? This is the main benefit of open source software, in my mind: no one can "take" it from you because it doesn't belong to "them" in the same way that a product does.
Joplin or Bookstack are probably the closest. Joplin is closer to Evernote.
https://joplinapp.org/
https://www.bookstackapp.com/
https://joplinapp.org/
https://www.bookstackapp.com/
Yeah I don't think Joplin has collaboration features. I also found the UI to be extremely bad on iOS.
BookStack doesn't have any client apps — it's basically a PHP app like WordPress that you can self-host, but the collaboration feature set is pretty good. It's a wiki that feels a bit like Notion.
BookStack doesn't have any client apps — it's basically a PHP app like WordPress that you can self-host, but the collaboration feature set is pretty good. It's a wiki that feels a bit like Notion.
Outline could be an alternative if your main usecase was internal team documentation. I understand that Notion can be used for a lot of other things too…
It is BSL licensed, the only restriction is that you cannot run a hosted version for other organizations to use (aka compete with the only way the project maintains itself).
https://www.getoutline.com/
It is BSL licensed, the only restriction is that you cannot run a hosted version for other organizations to use (aka compete with the only way the project maintains itself).
https://www.getoutline.com/
I'm a happy user of QOwnNotes and Markor with a shared dir with a sync tool of your choice. Indeed, committing my data to a closed (source) silo is what prevents me from using tools like this (Notion does look very neat).
I use Tiddlywiki. The good part is that, once you familiarize yourself with the internals, you can customize it any way you like.
https://tiddlywiki.com/
https://tiddlywiki.com/
No. There are tools doing similar stuff of some aspects of Notion. But the main benefit of Notion is the interface and collection of ability. And there is nothing like that at the moment. But the question is what you really want. Maybe you are just care for some specific aspect, not the whole tool?
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It's a wiki. MediaWiki has a lot of dynamic features now.
it's product as marketing: make happy individual users, in the target market, and you're likely to tell others, hopefully workmates or others like you. if you can get a workgroup using the product and happy with it, it's worth quite a bit more with their per-user subscription model for groups.
it can work well for productivity apps, slack, for example.
it can work well for productivity apps, slack, for example.
By keeping SSO out of personal use, they can be assured that most businesses will have to pay as thus they can more easily give this part of their service away.
Another example of the SSO Tax: https://robchahin.github.io/sso-wall-of-shame/
Another example of the SSO Tax: https://robchahin.github.io/sso-wall-of-shame/
Got about the same feeling, but then I noticed that this free personal plan allows only 5mb of file uploads as opposed to the unlimited uploads in the paid plan, which is one of my use cases – I store quite a lot of files there as a personal software archive, and then I felt relieved.
The 5mb is a per file size. You can still upload unlimited files as long as they're less than 5mb.
they might have ruined it for people paying for Notion Personal
>> What if I had multiple members in my free workspace? No worries, you don’t have to remove anyone! Nothing is different for you until you hit 1,000 blocks of content. At that point, if you want to add more, you can:
Upgrade to our Team Plan. Start a new workspace for just yourself and use it for free, indefinitely. Remove members, and enjoy no content limits on your own. Note: Make sure members in your workspace have their private pages backed up before you remove them!
>> What if I had multiple members in my free workspace? No worries, you don’t have to remove anyone! Nothing is different for you until you hit 1,000 blocks of content. At that point, if you want to add more, you can:
Upgrade to our Team Plan. Start a new workspace for just yourself and use it for free, indefinitely. Remove members, and enjoy no content limits on your own. Note: Make sure members in your workspace have their private pages backed up before you remove them!
Don't feel bad, they just got a major cash infusion from a VC firm. Looks like they figured those $4 a month individual users won't move their need much long term?
The flip side is that Evernote had a human-aligned business model and as a result never made enough money to compete with Microsoft OneNote.
Yeah, you might still have a reason though, if you upgrade to Personal Pro which gives you 30 days of version history
I mentioned this before. Notion is great, but the fact that they use fullstory (session recording) for a note taking app is a huge problem for me. We’re talking about potentially sensitive data being available to notion and perhaps fullstory employees for the sake of improving UX. I especially dislike the fact that they don’t disclose session recording upfront. I found out by inspecting their app webpage.
Sure there’s a way to opt out of fullstory in general, but that’s not very reliable.
I should mention that we use fullstory for our saas product and quite happy with it. However, our implementation makes it possible to opt out upfront during registration and or change your session recording settings from within our app. We don’t rely on fullstory or bs workarounds, we simply don’t load fullstory when you opt out.
Sure there’s a way to opt out of fullstory in general, but that’s not very reliable.
I should mention that we use fullstory for our saas product and quite happy with it. However, our implementation makes it possible to opt out upfront during registration and or change your session recording settings from within our app. We don’t rely on fullstory or bs workarounds, we simply don’t load fullstory when you opt out.
Hi Yabood, we actually don't use Fullstory anymore due to privacy concerns. We removed it 6-9 months ago from all platforms. If you're still seeing this somewhere please let me know so we can address it.
Does Notion have access to the content of my notes if they're compelled to produce them?
Do employees have access to the content of my notes?
Do employees have access to the content of my notes?
Notion employees are only allowed to access your workspace data with your written consent. We are also only allowed to do this in order to facilitate an improved user experience for you (e.g. debug problems you have asked support about, etc).
We are working on updating our T&C and Privacy Policy to make this more clear, but it is rigorously practiced internally already.
We do not yet have end-to-end encryption, or other encryption functionality that would make it technically impossible to access your data. We would love to do this at some point but it will be difficult because our permission model is quite complex!
We are working on updating our T&C and Privacy Policy to make this more clear, but it is rigorously practiced internally already.
We do not yet have end-to-end encryption, or other encryption functionality that would make it technically impossible to access your data. We would love to do this at some point but it will be difficult because our permission model is quite complex!
> Notion employees are only allowed to access your workspace data with your written consent. We are also only allowed to do this in order to facilitate an improved user experience for you (e.g. debug problems you have asked support about, etc).
Do you have technical controls in place to prevent this access, or is it more of a policy?
Do you have technical controls in place to prevent this access, or is it more of a policy?
Thanks for the reply, Jamie, much appreciated.
I would definitely pay for an E2E encrypted Notion.
I would definitely pay for an E2E encrypted Notion.
Thanks for raising the concern! We'd love to have that too at some point.
Ditto. Also I'm a big Notion fan but there is no way certain stuff I work on can be on it, or I can recommend it to many people doing sensitive things. Which is a pity. Notions security is its biggest flaw. Also the lack of proper two factor in the modern age is silly.
I'm curious. Why the need for E2E?
I tend to use these platforms to organize my personal life and thoughts. Sharing that information in any way with a for-profit company is a non-starter for me. "Trust us, we care about your privacy" isn't good enough for me.
I would recommend looking at Standard Notes. It's paid only but it's so worth it.
Yes they do. Read the T&C.
Was hoping for an answer from someone at Notion rather than "read a 50 page legal document", but thanks.
The one thing that bothers me about Notion (and Slack and other "everything in one place" tools), is the lack of encryption. I might have FAANGophobia, but whenever there is a free tier without a form of end-to-end encryption in place, it feels like a data puddle waiting to become a lake.
That being said, having clear-text data would allow features like an API on publicly shared pages/blocks, to use Notion as a CMS. I have seen some attempts [1] at reverse-engineering their internal API, but an official one on a paid plan could be a nice addition.
[1] https://github.com/splitbee/notion-api-worker
That being said, having clear-text data would allow features like an API on publicly shared pages/blocks, to use Notion as a CMS. I have seen some attempts [1] at reverse-engineering their internal API, but an official one on a paid plan could be a nice addition.
[1] https://github.com/splitbee/notion-api-worker
this is the only thing that stops me from using Notion, too. just downloaded it and it looks like it would change my life... except i don't own the data.
right now i'm trying out Outline [1] which has an option for self hosting.
[1] https://github.com/outline/outline
right now i'm trying out Outline [1] which has an option for self hosting.
[1] https://github.com/outline/outline
Thanks for the mention!
Outline also has an RPC-style API for the entire project btw, the documentation needs a little work but it's there: https://getoutline.com/developers
Outline also has an RPC-style API for the entire project btw, the documentation needs a little work but it's there: https://getoutline.com/developers
I just checked outline out and went to try the hosted version, but looks like they don't let me sign up with my own email. I generate emails for each service I use, and am much too lazy to generate a Slack account just to use it to sign into this. I suppose I could spin up an instance and self-host, but don't want to dedicate 30 mins to just setting this up to test it out.
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I just checked out Outline. It seems strange that the landing page example is lifted straight from Stripe's docs[1] with "Stripe" replaced by "Acme".
[1] https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks#what-are-webhooks
[1] https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks#what-are-webhooks
I can tell you that a large majority of in-production API docs use Stripe's docs as a template. I did it for my company, and I've seen a ton of other API services do it. Stripe leads in API docs, so it's easier to not reinvent the wheel and just do what works. I know this instance isn't even for a production product, but meh.
Good spot! I guess that was a little cheeky in hindsight…
who cares?
Would really appreciate your thoughts on this, if you have any initial feedback.
We're considering the self-hosted option too - that's the big draw.
We're considering the self-hosted option too - that's the big draw.
i've only been using it for a little bit, but here goes:
* unlike Notion, it's one workspace per instance. makes sense, but worth noting as using workspaces as for organisational purposes won't work so well here.
* for personal instances, Slack doesn't make all that much sense. i see a PR for LDAP support on GitHub, so i will play around with that
* supports embeds just like Notion - paste the link and it just works. supports codepen, figma, gsuite, youtube and others. this was the feature that made me take notice of notion, so it's good to see it here.
* even better, the embed API seems pretty easily extensible, so the sky's the limit here. i can't wait to make some sweet dashboards based on entirely self-hosted data!
* no mobile app is a bit of a bummer, but the PWA experience works pretty well. considering i'll be authoring predominantly on desktop and only reading on iPhone, this isn't so much of a big deal for my use case
* no auto-save :(
* you can share a read-only, fully public link of any page you want. pretty damn cool.
all in all i'm pretty impressed. it seems pretty robust! i mean, it's definitely not as full-fat as Notion, but perhaps that's a good thing - and OSS means it's easily extensible for whatever you need to use it for. who knows which way my opinion will change after some more extensive use, but this definitely shows promise.
* unlike Notion, it's one workspace per instance. makes sense, but worth noting as using workspaces as for organisational purposes won't work so well here.
* for personal instances, Slack doesn't make all that much sense. i see a PR for LDAP support on GitHub, so i will play around with that
* supports embeds just like Notion - paste the link and it just works. supports codepen, figma, gsuite, youtube and others. this was the feature that made me take notice of notion, so it's good to see it here.
* even better, the embed API seems pretty easily extensible, so the sky's the limit here. i can't wait to make some sweet dashboards based on entirely self-hosted data!
* no mobile app is a bit of a bummer, but the PWA experience works pretty well. considering i'll be authoring predominantly on desktop and only reading on iPhone, this isn't so much of a big deal for my use case
* no auto-save :(
* you can share a read-only, fully public link of any page you want. pretty damn cool.
all in all i'm pretty impressed. it seems pretty robust! i mean, it's definitely not as full-fat as Notion, but perhaps that's a good thing - and OSS means it's easily extensible for whatever you need to use it for. who knows which way my opinion will change after some more extensive use, but this definitely shows promise.
There is no easy way to implement client side encryption. You will have a private key or long password the you will keep safe. You lose that all your data in gone. Plus it's difficult to securely move that password to a new platform
Your data being inaccessible without a private key or password is the entire point.
People rightfully get skittish when there's no "forgot password" mechanism to get their account and data back.
I certainly agree that that's the point, but such a system needs some potential usability affordances. For instance, a key stored in the browser rather than a password the user has to remember, and ideally a key synced between multiple devices controlled by the user so that the loss or failure of one device does not mean loss of the account.
For example, imagine having the browser generate an asymmetric key for the user, and making sure browsers store such keys (encrypted) in Firefox Sync or equivalent, so that the keys are safe even if the user moves to a new device or an existing device fails or gets lost.
I certainly agree that that's the point, but such a system needs some potential usability affordances. For instance, a key stored in the browser rather than a password the user has to remember, and ideally a key synced between multiple devices controlled by the user so that the loss or failure of one device does not mean loss of the account.
For example, imagine having the browser generate an asymmetric key for the user, and making sure browsers store such keys (encrypted) in Firefox Sync or equivalent, so that the keys are safe even if the user moves to a new device or an existing device fails or gets lost.
I wrote some ideas on how to implement a password reset for end-to-end encrypted apps, reviews and comments are welcome:
https://francoisbest.com/posts/2020/password-reset-for-e2ee-...
https://francoisbest.com/posts/2020/password-reset-for-e2ee-...
Keeping an unencrypted local mirror on your own device(s) would solve that problem, as well as potentially the "my data is stuck on their servers" problem. On devices with space for it, I mean, so maybe laptop but not phone by default.
How do you even sync the key between multiple devices? If you send the private key to the server that undoes any protection from the encryption
You derive a master key from a password, and use that to encrypt other keys, or a more complex key chain if needed. You then only sync encrypted keys with the server.
Firefox Sync has a model that doesn't trust the server.
1Password figured it out, and even wrote a paper about it. So it's a solvable problem. They even figured out a good model for helping recover lost passwords when my family members forget it.
https://1password.com/files/1Password-White-Paper.pdf
Don't work for Agile Bits, but have used 1P for a long time and couldn't live without it.
https://1password.com/files/1Password-White-Paper.pdf
Don't work for Agile Bits, but have used 1P for a long time and couldn't live without it.
Maybe it's not easy to have client side encryption, but it seems CryptPad has it:
https://cryptpad.fr
https://github.com/xwiki-labs/cryptpad
https://cryptpad.fr
https://github.com/xwiki-labs/cryptpad
The idea is not to move the password, or any derived key, but the clear-text data. GDPR and other laws enforce that you give customers the right to access their data (in clear text), if possible in an interoperable form. Notion does so in CSV and Markdown, which is good enough to transfer to another service.
We've been working on Portabella (https://portabella.io) for the last four weeks in an effort to bring end-to-end encryption to everyday tasks. Currently we support basic kanban boards and lists. Like other comments have highlighted there is no reason for data not to be encrypted in this day and age.
Currently everything happens client side, however we believe homomorphic encryption is at a level of sophistication that should support most users and their needs.
Currently everything happens client side, however we believe homomorphic encryption is at a level of sophistication that should support most users and their needs.
Standard Notes is end-to-end encrypted:
https://standardnotes.org
Made me puke when Evernote introduced the "Context" feature, a disgusting data grab. It's a much worse option than just searching for whatever I want by myself, with the added anti-feature of losing all privacy to Evernote staff (and whomever hacks/has already hacked them).
My guess is that all these apps are salivating over the data to be able to train their NLP models which they can sell to an acquirer. I can't wait for Obsidian or some other app to reach feature parity (including wide, stable platform support). Would happily pay $$$ per year for it.
My guess is that all these apps are salivating over the data to be able to train their NLP models which they can sell to an acquirer. I can't wait for Obsidian or some other app to reach feature parity (including wide, stable platform support). Would happily pay $$$ per year for it.
Hi there. I'm a co-founder of Emvi [1] and we have an API on our paid plan (free as we are in beta right now) that you can use as a headless CMS. Our blog is an example of it. We have (incomplete) client libraries on GitHub [2].
[1] https://emvi.com/
[2] https://github.com/emvi
[1] https://emvi.com/
[2] https://github.com/emvi
I'm assuming you are talking about end-to-end encryption, which in case of tools like Slack doesn't really make sense because it's the company that owns and has total control of the data, not you the end user. What happens when they need to hand over records for discovery, for example?
Please elaborate what you mean by discovery ?
It's a legal term - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(law). Most countries/industries have some kind of regulation around data storage and retention for exactly this purpose.
The entire point of end-to-end encryption is to prevent this from being automated and abused by either the legal system or the company. Requiring a warrant to access the secret key on the user device reduces the risk of mass surveillance. Metadata (access logs) remain in clear text and can still be used to help authorities identify nefarious activity.
I’m not sure what it is, but I feel like HN seems to pick apart everything that’s posted in a negative light. Honestly I discovered Notion a few years back and used it for a while, but stopped using it when I couldn’t sync it with my teams project management software. Fast forward a few years and my SO and I were at a restaurant sitting next to a guy who’s one of the early engineers in the company, and that sparked my interest again. Since then, I’ve been using Notion to replace Google Docs and Trello, and it’s been fantastic
Yeah this is part of what makes HN what it is. I'm not sure it could be any other way if its a community comprised of people building product for a living, who see the world as a mutable, and whose products tend to mostly be rehashes of prior products (not throwing shade, most products are just new takes on the same couple dozen ideas from 30 years ago).
Most negative comments aren't mean-spirited, but they can verge on nitpicky. The worst type of comments are not those talking about product shortcomings, but are ones that veer way off topic into a commenter's pet point and kind of tank the whole discussion. Similarly, if everyone's just praising a product its not particularly constructive or helpful, except to know the product is going in the right direction. Good critique is super valuable.
Most negative comments aren't mean-spirited, but they can verge on nitpicky. The worst type of comments are not those talking about product shortcomings, but are ones that veer way off topic into a commenter's pet point and kind of tank the whole discussion. Similarly, if everyone's just praising a product its not particularly constructive or helpful, except to know the product is going in the right direction. Good critique is super valuable.
I think it's universal that any time there's a comments section on a website with at the very least a sort "air of intellectualism" (independent of whether the users are smart) the comments are generally going to be critical.
This isn't necessarily because people who think they're smart are melancholic. I think it's because praise ultimately sounds the same in the end. Because it sounds the same, it doesn't sound smart, it doesn't get upvoted, you're better off just not posting it.
On the other hand, you can sound smart and original with criticism if you word it right.
Hence why I take the critical comments with a grain of salt and pay attention to the fact that the original HN post is on the front page with 256 points at the time of this writing. A lot of people clearly really like Notion.
This isn't necessarily because people who think they're smart are melancholic. I think it's because praise ultimately sounds the same in the end. Because it sounds the same, it doesn't sound smart, it doesn't get upvoted, you're better off just not posting it.
On the other hand, you can sound smart and original with criticism if you word it right.
Hence why I take the critical comments with a grain of salt and pay attention to the fact that the original HN post is on the front page with 256 points at the time of this writing. A lot of people clearly really like Notion.
Not my experience of HN, it highlights both the positive and negatives. There is a lot of critical feedback, often from people who have built successful products, and it can be really useful for those trying to start/grow their product. For some people, Notion will hit a sweet spot, for others, it won't. I did an evaluation of it, and found it had a bunch of shortcomings for our development team and I sent my feedback to them.
Thanks. I'm going to give it a try. I currently use Trello to track my personal stuff. How does Notion compare?
I personally like the UX more, and it’s just a smoother experience for me than trello. Also what’s cool is we’ve divided up the Kanban boards so they’re separated by team, but they merge into a master board so we can see how everyone is doing at a glance. I also use it for tech designs writing documentation so, I need more than trello by default
I think Notion is a superset of Trello and because of that it's not as good at being a task tracker as Trello is, but it does so much more than task tracking that the benefits most likely outweigh any drawbacks.
I'd recommend watching their office hours video for building things from scratch to see how powerful it is for personal use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1I3Hic0urY
I'd recommend watching their office hours video for building things from scratch to see how powerful it is for personal use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1I3Hic0urY
Note-taking is very similar to blogging. Many people lose so much time while searching for the best app instead of taking notes. If you want to develop a proper note-taking habit, just start writing into somewhere. md files, evernote, notion, etc. after a while, you will know your needs and you will be able to pick one of them easily. I have been using https://www.zoho.com/notebook/ for a while and I am happy with it. Since my needs are extremely simple: bullets, tags, groups, mobile app, macOS apps.
I've tried so many note/todo/productivity apps throughout the years and I always find myself coming back to one simple solution:
- keep your daily todo stuff on a sheet of paper in front of you, transfer the stuff from yesterday onto a fresh sheet before starting to work
- keep project specific tasks close to the project. If the project is physical stick a note onto it, if it is git managed code open a issue or add a todo inline, or add a todo.md in the project folder. Only put a vague line on your daily todo sheet: "work on project x" all the detailed stuff should be in the project
- if you have calls, meetings etc, just add them to your calendar with a reminder, no need to have them on the todo list
- keep your daily todo stuff on a sheet of paper in front of you, transfer the stuff from yesterday onto a fresh sheet before starting to work
- keep project specific tasks close to the project. If the project is physical stick a note onto it, if it is git managed code open a issue or add a todo inline, or add a todo.md in the project folder. Only put a vague line on your daily todo sheet: "work on project x" all the detailed stuff should be in the project
- if you have calls, meetings etc, just add them to your calendar with a reminder, no need to have them on the todo list
Same here. No productivity app will win me back the time I have spent looking for them.
I build a very stripped down to-do list sametable.app as a counterforce to all the all-i n-one platforms.
Notion is great. My one complaint is the fact that there's no "family plan". I currently have a free workspace that I share with my spouse, but we're about to hit the 1000 block limit. Notion CS's recommendation was for me to use a personal plan and invite them to each page we want to share, or to create a top-level page that all of the shared pages are nested under and invite them to the top-level page alone, but this is very annoying. But I don't want to pay $16/mo just for 2 members who don't need advanced team features.
(Notion here) We agree! The new personal plan enables you to have unlimited pages & blocks and share with up to 5 guests for free. https://www.notion.so/pricing
Guests have to be invited to individual pages though, right? So this means I still need to either invite my spouse to every single shared page (which is problematic if my spouse wants to create a new top-level shared page in my workspace), or nest all the shared stuff under a single top-level page which is annoying (and hurts navigation on mobile).
so does that mean the person you've shared it with can have access to the full workspace?
I honestly don't mind paying $8/month for 2 but it seems that the only way we can both be admin immediately bring this cost to the team plan at $16/mo for two....
Same problem here, I ended up creating different workspaces altogether as I can't justify paying $16/mo for 2.
all workspaces now appear as "Team plan trial" but still the same limitations as before which is fine with me. all the workspaces are named with our initials at the beginning to make sure we don't get confused with personal ones...
ie : "AB - Home | AB - Finances | AB - Life" etc.
all workspaces now appear as "Team plan trial" but still the same limitations as before which is fine with me. all the workspaces are named with our initials at the beginning to make sure we don't get confused with personal ones...
ie : "AB - Home | AB - Finances | AB - Life" etc.
This is my exact experience. I wanted to share a page I put together for our garden, so we could both edit it. Notion wanted 16/mo for us. While that pricing makes sense for a company, it doesn't make sense for a household.
They just changed this, pretty great.
Same situation with my wife. :/
+1 in exact same situation
I'm sad that so many of the top comments here are Notion skeptical. I have loved Notion from the very beginning and used it as a personal repository for a long time.
More recently, we used Notion - where 'we' = a group of professional volunteers; professional in that everyone had skills to contribute and volunteer in that no one is being paid for those contributions - to create a Citizen-to-Citizen long term support platform for those impacted adversely by the COVID19 epidemic. In India in case you're wondering.
The challenges are many:
1. Make it clear that we see ourselves not as a charity but as a citizen to citizen support network - today it could be that person, but tomorrow it could be you. We have to design around the dignity of the recipient and the donor.
2. We need to identify potential beneficiaries whose needs are verifiable. Which means involving organizations that work with migrant laborers at scale (to take a key demographic) and can verify and on-board those potential beneficiaries.
3. We need to pull together the back-end and front-end technology to make donations without intermediaries, i.e., there's no middleman receiving and storing the money - it's a direct transfer from one individuals account to another individual's account. No administrative fees and with any luck we could even see if the credit card fees can be waived.
4. Compelling and easy to grasp design that inspires trust in potential donors and even more importantly, builds solidarity between the donor and the recipient. We are all in this together, aren't we?
5. A communications strategy that brings in donors and creates a democratic narrative around donations.
Each one of these needs several individuals and sometimes several organizations to collaborate and agree upon a course of action. Notion helped us do that layer by layer, with the top level principles leading naturally to more technical decisions and an easy way to share content with non-technical but nevertheless insightful leaders in organizations that are providing essential services.
We first tried doing it with a combination of Google docs, Github repositories and other pieces of chewing gum and string, but once we shifted to Notion we never looked back. So much so that the next project this group is attempting is Notion native.
More recently, we used Notion - where 'we' = a group of professional volunteers; professional in that everyone had skills to contribute and volunteer in that no one is being paid for those contributions - to create a Citizen-to-Citizen long term support platform for those impacted adversely by the COVID19 epidemic. In India in case you're wondering.
The challenges are many:
1. Make it clear that we see ourselves not as a charity but as a citizen to citizen support network - today it could be that person, but tomorrow it could be you. We have to design around the dignity of the recipient and the donor.
2. We need to identify potential beneficiaries whose needs are verifiable. Which means involving organizations that work with migrant laborers at scale (to take a key demographic) and can verify and on-board those potential beneficiaries.
3. We need to pull together the back-end and front-end technology to make donations without intermediaries, i.e., there's no middleman receiving and storing the money - it's a direct transfer from one individuals account to another individual's account. No administrative fees and with any luck we could even see if the credit card fees can be waived.
4. Compelling and easy to grasp design that inspires trust in potential donors and even more importantly, builds solidarity between the donor and the recipient. We are all in this together, aren't we?
5. A communications strategy that brings in donors and creates a democratic narrative around donations.
Each one of these needs several individuals and sometimes several organizations to collaborate and agree upon a course of action. Notion helped us do that layer by layer, with the top level principles leading naturally to more technical decisions and an easy way to share content with non-technical but nevertheless insightful leaders in organizations that are providing essential services.
We first tried doing it with a combination of Google docs, Github repositories and other pieces of chewing gum and string, but once we shifted to Notion we never looked back. So much so that the next project this group is attempting is Notion native.
Hey i am originally from india and what you said resonated with me especially related to the issues faced by migrants. Any way I can contribute to your project?
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you for your generous offer of help. We don't need additional support at this time but I will keep you in mind if new needs come up. Thanks once again.
This changes a lot for me. I like Notion's interface, as well as the functionality included. It feels like a desktop app, which Google Docs simply can't compete with (they're also Google products, do with that what you will). The "blocks" limit always felt arbitrary on Free, so I never really got into it, but now that I can use this like I would normally use a note-taking app, I can see it being very valuable.
edit: apparently there's also a free upgrade to Personal Pro for EDU users, I wonder if that's been around for a while.
edit: apparently there's also a free upgrade to Personal Pro for EDU users, I wonder if that's been around for a while.
free for edu users since Sep 2019.
Accredited college or university only (e.g. no elementary or high schools). Also currently no discount for team plans.
If you ask, they'll give you access if you have a HS email... at least thats what I did sometime last year.
I know it's a niche need but any note-taking app I use needs to support Latex and code highlighting. Unfortunately, once I throw this criteria in just about every app gets excluded, but at least VSC + sync is still very nice.
https://tiddlywiki.com/plugins/tiddlywiki/katex/
https://tiddlywiki.com/plugins/tiddlywiki/highlight/
[my setup is just markdown, really, but it's here](https://lesser.occult.institute/an-opinionated-approach-to-t...)
[my setup is just markdown, really, but it's here](https://lesser.occult.institute/an-opinionated-approach-to-t...)
Supernotes[1] has been called "a smaller, faster notion" and supports LaTeX (both inline and block, notion only does block) and code highlighting.
Disclaimer: I built it.
1: https://supernotes.app
Disclaimer: I built it.
1: https://supernotes.app
... You have a cookie pop-up that says, "Can we use cookies?" but the only option is a "Yes" button. If you're not giving people a choice, why even pretend?
Tracking scripts / cookies are only loaded if you click "Yes", otherwise they are not loaded at all.
But if you don't tap "yes" there is no way to dismiss it. Not a fan of this behaviour, and won't be looking any further.
This is top-tier HN material right here folks.
If you use dark patterns on your front page, why would I ever trust your app?
How do you see this as a "dark pattern"? I see it as more of a reasonable compromise. If you visit my site, I think it's reasonable for me to understand how you're using it. If you don't want to participate in that, you are given a choice. That choice is between being tracked and having a mildly distracting banner at the bottom of a landing page. This doesn't seem like a betrayal of trust in any way. The implicit trust here is that you will not be tracked unless you agree to be tracked. This is in fact the case.
Of course, on the one hand we do want you to opt in to tracking. This is a marketing site, after all. If you're actually interested in the product, tracking helps us understand who is interested and why, which in turn allows us to improve the product and reach more potential users. If you're not interested in the product, you don't need to click yes and there is no problem – because presumably you won't be spending very much time on the landing page for a product you're not interested in.
I think a landing page like this one is slightly different from, say, a big cookie banner on a news website, as the intent is not really for you to be spending a lot of time reading content on this site.
Of course, on the one hand we do want you to opt in to tracking. This is a marketing site, after all. If you're actually interested in the product, tracking helps us understand who is interested and why, which in turn allows us to improve the product and reach more potential users. If you're not interested in the product, you don't need to click yes and there is no problem – because presumably you won't be spending very much time on the landing page for a product you're not interested in.
I think a landing page like this one is slightly different from, say, a big cookie banner on a news website, as the intent is not really for you to be spending a lot of time reading content on this site.
It's a UX dark pattern because (besides deleting the html element) there's no way to dismiss a call to action, you can only ignore it.
Just because it's annoying doesn't mean it's a dark pattern in the typical sense of the word. Here's darkpatterns.org's definition:
> Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something.
And here is the one used by the verge [0]:
> A dark pattern is a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills
Here there's no trickery and no chance that a user would unintentionally agree to cookies when they didn't mean to. It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want. It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-ins...
> Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something.
And here is the one used by the verge [0]:
> A dark pattern is a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills
Here there's no trickery and no chance that a user would unintentionally agree to cookies when they didn't mean to. It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want. It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-ins...
> Just because it's annoying doesn't mean it's a dark pattern in the typical sense of the word.
I'm happy to include multiple forms of coercion; the pattern here is the ratchet: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/
> It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want.
That's a nice summary of a class of dark patterns, yes.
> It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site.
It absolutely is unethical, and yes as I said above I will consider this a good reason to avoid the app.
I'm happy to include multiple forms of coercion; the pattern here is the ratchet: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/
> It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want.
That's a nice summary of a class of dark patterns, yes.
> It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site.
It absolutely is unethical, and yes as I said above I will consider this a good reason to avoid the app.
What exactly is your definition of ethical? Because a little box at the bottom of a webpage that just sits there does not really cross the unethical line for me.
For me, this is only a dark pattern if the cookie banner makes the site unusable (as many sites do) until you click "Yes". Ours clearly does not.
Regardless, the initial accusation was:
> If you're not giving people a choice, why even pretend?
Which is clearly not true. There is a very real choice – we are not pretending. Your choice matters.
For me, this is only a dark pattern if the cookie banner makes the site unusable (as many sites do) until you click "Yes". Ours clearly does not.
Regardless, the initial accusation was:
> If you're not giving people a choice, why even pretend?
Which is clearly not true. There is a very real choice – we are not pretending. Your choice matters.
> It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want.
Ah, cool then.
Ah, cool then.
Not having a clear way to deny personalised tracking is also in violation of the EU Cookie Directive.
From looking at the currency used though, it seems that you don't need to concern yourself with EU stuff soon =)
From looking at the currency used though, it seems that you don't need to concern yourself with EU stuff soon =)
As far as the EU Cookie Directive is concerned, I don't think this is correct. The directive stipulates that you cannot use non-vital cookies until the user explicitly consents. This consent must be freely given, i.e. it must not be a requirement to use the site. Since our banner is mildly annoying but doesn't prevent use of the site, I think this complies. As a side note, I'm not sure you can be in "violation" of the ePrivacy directive, as it is a directive, not a regulation (unlike GDPR). This will change when the ePrivacy Regulation[1] comes into play. I might be wrong here though, IANAL.
However, since a lot of people are not a fan of our banner, we've decided to add an explicit "no" option. I still disagree that our original implementation is a "dark pattern", as we very explicitly[2] will not sell your data, and tracking for the sake of improving the product seems like a square deal to me. But I can understand how people would find it annoying, so it's been changed. Sorry about that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPrivacy_Regulation_(European_... [2] https://supernotes.app/terms/
However, since a lot of people are not a fan of our banner, we've decided to add an explicit "no" option. I still disagree that our original implementation is a "dark pattern", as we very explicitly[2] will not sell your data, and tracking for the sake of improving the product seems like a square deal to me. But I can understand how people would find it annoying, so it's been changed. Sorry about that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPrivacy_Regulation_(European_... [2] https://supernotes.app/terms/
Notion thankfully does support LaTeX, but only in equation mode (e.g. `\[...\]`, not `\(...\)`).
Just type `/math` in a Notion document to bring it up.
Just type `/math` in a Notion document to bring it up.
Joplin[0] supports code highlighting and TeX math. I assume you just need TeX for equations, not for the whole document. It's also open source, and works with several different sync back-ends. I've been using it for some time and am very happy with it so far.
0 - https://joplinapp.org/
0 - https://joplinapp.org/
Sounds like a good use case for Orgmode.
Notion supports Katex if formulas and other related stuff is all you care about.
https://katex.org/
https://katex.org/
One more suggestion for you – dropbox paper (https://paper.dropbox.com/) has latex support + syntax highlighting. It's quite simple but it works well as a google docs replacement. As others have mentioned Notion is also fantastic.
Nothing has beaten having a local Hugo server running (with a theme that has Katex and syntax highlighting). Note taking can be like blogging to yourself, and the flat markdown means it's easy to edit and search. I don't have the time to learn orgmode, which I'm sure is better.
So this isn't a structured notes app like Notion, but InkDrop has support for Latex and code highlighting. It's not free, but it's the only notes app I've ever been willing to pay for aside from Bear.
Take a look at Emvi: https://emvi.com/
We have Latex on our roadmap for formulas.
Try Quiver!
I tried the Notion twice. It looks good, works fine and has a reasonable price. But. You cannot write notes in this application. Literally. You can build tables, resize images, align lists in different shapes, have a dashboard for all thousand cases you have with favourites photos as headers, filter views with a million conditions, manage to-dos and project with kanban, ..., but you cannot write simple notes. The interface will fight you, mouse/trackpad are required in many cases, Enter key will produce different unexpected results...
This is a good piece of software. But if you want to take simple linked notes, then you probably need something else.
This is a good piece of software. But if you want to take simple linked notes, then you probably need something else.
Hmm, I primarily use Notion for notes, and for me I almost never need to leave my keyboard. I can write like I’m writing markdown and text formatting is rendered automatically, the / commands work very well and the keyboard focus works sanely (I can type /link, hit enter, search for a page, browse through results with my keyboard, hit enter, and get a link to that page, then press enter to get on to the next line).
Can you be more specific about what doesn’t work for you?
Can you be more specific about what doesn’t work for you?
Hey there, we've thought about that too and came up with a new user interface concept. Emvi [1] supports interlinked articles already and you can search through your notes easily. But we found the current user interface to inefficient for both, simple note taking and collaboration. You can read about our new concept here: https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZg...
It will come out in about three weeks and we're always curious about feedback :)
[1] https://emvi.com/
It will come out in about three weeks and we're always curious about feedback :)
[1] https://emvi.com/
Is this a alternative frontend for notion? Or what do you mean?
From the look of it this seems like another poor implementation of the same old tricks and concepts which everyone already know and uses.
From the look of it this seems like another poor implementation of the same old tricks and concepts which everyone already know and uses.
No it's a new frontend for Emvi which focuses on keyboard controls and better attention focus. What do you mean by the same old tricks? You'll find some images and gifs in our Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/emvi
It means there is nothing special about this, no innovation, nothing outstanding. Just playing the same old tune which so many others are already playing for a long long time.
What do you recommend (besides org mode, I don't use Emacs). I need something to write down ideas, store concepts I've learned, and at the same time has a Kanban board so I can track/manage progress of my side projects. Preferably, something that works offline. Preferably something open-source so I can rewire the thing to my needs.
I use https://dynalist.io/ and enjoys its ease of us a lot - it is admittedly a glorified version of https://workflowy.com/, but while Workflowy invented the bullet-list web app formula, I find that it has stagnated in ideas for a while and I do like the little extra features Dynalist has.
What? Notion's keyboard support is my absolute favorite part about it. I can brianstorm and take meeting minutes at the speed of thought!
Notion consuming 10-15% CPU while on idle is a deal breaker to me. I wish they'd devote a bit more resources to fix this.
(On macOS, don't know if this is the case on other OSes)
(On macOS, don't know if this is the case on other OSes)
On iPadOS it ignores pointer and external keyboard. Wish their apps were more native to the platforms.
This is the downside of webapps, they have to reimplement all the UX that native apps have builtin. In this case, Apple updated things like buttons and text inputs in their native components, so any app using those didn't have to do anything to make it work as expected.
It does? I keep Notion running but hidden on my Mac all day long and I haven't noticed this.
I tried it around November 2019, really liked Notion and the UI/UX of the product for some note taking/personal knowledge base, however I had to contact their security team through their support because TLS 1.0 was still enabled at this time.
They say they are audited by NCC ( https://www.notion.so/Security-6c56b4854b624b0d8f36711018647... ) but I don't know how NCC missed this. They disabled TLS 1.0 few days after my message.
My second concern is that their .so domain is the TLD of Somalia (with all the risks it brings in case of malicious takeover), and .so zone doesn't even support DNSSEC, once again this is a big issue for me, especially for an app that hosts "personal data" (I see they also make calls on a .com domain, but the .so main domain issue still stands). Support told me they would change the domain in the future but still didn't happened.
It's only my personal security stance/paranoia, but my 2 cents of what happened with them.
They say they are audited by NCC ( https://www.notion.so/Security-6c56b4854b624b0d8f36711018647... ) but I don't know how NCC missed this. They disabled TLS 1.0 few days after my message.
My second concern is that their .so domain is the TLD of Somalia (with all the risks it brings in case of malicious takeover), and .so zone doesn't even support DNSSEC, once again this is a big issue for me, especially for an app that hosts "personal data" (I see they also make calls on a .com domain, but the .so main domain issue still stands). Support told me they would change the domain in the future but still didn't happened.
It's only my personal security stance/paranoia, but my 2 cents of what happened with them.
Virtually no mainstream platforms enable DNSSEC (what's the largest one you can find? It won't be in the Moz 500); it's not as if there's a major competitor to Notion you'll find that is DNSSEC-signed. DNSSEC is moribund.
What's ironic about this comment is that in our present WebPKI, Somalia's ownership of .so only tangentially impacts their security (Somalia could in theory seize the domain and DV-verify a new cert). But in a DNSSEC world, Somalia would have de jure control over both the domain and Notion's TLS certificates, which would chain through DANE from the same root.
What's ironic about this comment is that in our present WebPKI, Somalia's ownership of .so only tangentially impacts their security (Somalia could in theory seize the domain and DV-verify a new cert). But in a DNSSEC world, Somalia would have de jure control over both the domain and Notion's TLS certificates, which would chain through DANE from the same root.
Valid points, as a customer I find that very concerning and I would like to hear their thoughts.
Personally I don't mind a vanity domain, but what they could do is create a boring non-vanity domain for API calls and customer signup that isn't the .so domain.
I don't care about DNSSEC but it seems that .so TLD looks like potential risk for stability. (like .io case)
I'm looking for something similar to Notion for my company's internal documentation (including operations), but it needs to be internationalized (and Notion isn't).
I've found out about Joplin[1] and thought it was the answer, but it seems that I cannot easily share the notes with my team in a collaborative manner. A pity! The quest continues.
[1]https://joplinapp.org/
I've found out about Joplin[1] and thought it was the answer, but it seems that I cannot easily share the notes with my team in a collaborative manner. A pity! The quest continues.
[1]https://joplinapp.org/
What do you mean by internationalized? The user interface? I'm the co-founder of Emvi [1]. We support English and German on the user interface and you can add languages to your organization which allows your members to add translations for that languages. So an article can be present in multiple languages and use the one you chose as default as a fallback.
[1] https://emvi.com/
[1] https://emvi.com/
Yes, user interface. I'll take a look at your app!
EDIT: Unfortunately, my company is heavily invested in Office 365 (Teams and friends) and we use our Azure AD logins for everything. Emvi seems to integrate Google credentials only. However, your product looks amazing! That's exactly what I'm looking for. I'll be sure to keep an eye on it for when it starts supporting Microsoft (i.e. Teams) logins or when (if) my company migrates to Google in the future :)
EDIT: Unfortunately, my company is heavily invested in Office 365 (Teams and friends) and we use our Azure AD logins for everything. Emvi seems to integrate Google credentials only. However, your product looks amazing! That's exactly what I'm looking for. I'll be sure to keep an eye on it for when it starts supporting Microsoft (i.e. Teams) logins or when (if) my company migrates to Google in the future :)
Thanks! Nice to hear that :)
We've thought about AD. Can I contact you when we have integrated it? It won't happen in the next few weeks but we're definitely looking at it. You can send a mail to [email protected] and I'll put you on our contact list.
Ah good. Well what language do you need then? As I said we support English and German. The articles you write can be multilingual.
Portuguese Brazil, but my team would gladly translate it for you.
That would be incredible! It's actually not that much to translate I think. Read my comment above and I might come back to you.
For small collaborative work CodiMD is great
https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd
https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd
Anybody using Notion for personal knowledge management (lecture notes, literature notes, etc). Why do you find it oreferable to Roam, Obsidian or some of the other new Zettelkasten approaches?
Some people need structure, which is absolutely fine. But I always wanted to throw stuff into it and use the search to navigate. You can check out Emvi [1] if you like, I'm on of the founders.
[1] https://emvi.com/
[1] https://emvi.com/
Notion is just a fantastic piece of software and the team seems focused on making it better and cheaper at the same time. They should be unequivocally congratulated for this and I wish them more success.
Also if you ever change your mind on hiring outside of SF, call me :-)
Also if you ever change your mind on hiring outside of SF, call me :-)
I use Joplin and sync all my notes to Dropbox. It cannot be called a Notion alternative exactly, because Notion's flexibility to manage different things using "blocks" is unmatched for. However after using Notion, I felt that most of my time/energy goes into understanding how to create the template and no it's not a one time thing. Every time I add a to-do/task or an issue or use it as a bookmark manager, I am often presented with the question "Could it be done any better?". It's very important to get the tool out of your way if you follow any process like GTD.
My current workflow involves Taskwarrior + Joplin. I use TW for very very specific tasks and `task next` helps me plan my day. I use Joplin as my "Notebook" and have all my notes synced there. The default theme is a bit ugly, agreed, so I use "Artim Dark" with it. The biggest reason to choose Joplin was that it's actively maintained, the apps are not great but decent I'd say, it lets me use the APIs and CLI tools to backup my Joplin DB and upload to remote storage periodically (in addition to the built in Dropbox sync), in case the sync doesn't work some day. I also use Joplin Web Clipper Firefox extension to save bookmarks/screenshots from website to a notebook "Bookmarks". It can even store the whole webpage in your Notebook, which is beautifully rendered. It even has support for E2EE for notes, but I am yet to explore that. The search is based on SQLite FTS4 and it works awesomely well. There is a support for wildcard queries, and it basically searches across all your notebooks and is quite fast that too. Also, I love writing in Markdown, and unlike Notion, this is really quick to launch, open a notebook and start writing ASAP without dealing with the cognitive overhead that Notion presents with it's quirky "Template/Empty Page" options. Did I mention that I can write notes in any editor (I use VS Code) and Joplin will simply `watch` for changes on that file and save it in your notebook? :D
So basically I am in full control of my data, something any Notion user can never claim. I also love the fact that the code is OSS, the APIs are open and it allows me to build tools on top of Joplin to use it the way I like. And I don't have to worry for the day, the VC funding of Notion dries up and I am left with no option but to move to some other SASS product.
My current workflow involves Taskwarrior + Joplin. I use TW for very very specific tasks and `task next` helps me plan my day. I use Joplin as my "Notebook" and have all my notes synced there. The default theme is a bit ugly, agreed, so I use "Artim Dark" with it. The biggest reason to choose Joplin was that it's actively maintained, the apps are not great but decent I'd say, it lets me use the APIs and CLI tools to backup my Joplin DB and upload to remote storage periodically (in addition to the built in Dropbox sync), in case the sync doesn't work some day. I also use Joplin Web Clipper Firefox extension to save bookmarks/screenshots from website to a notebook "Bookmarks". It can even store the whole webpage in your Notebook, which is beautifully rendered. It even has support for E2EE for notes, but I am yet to explore that. The search is based on SQLite FTS4 and it works awesomely well. There is a support for wildcard queries, and it basically searches across all your notebooks and is quite fast that too. Also, I love writing in Markdown, and unlike Notion, this is really quick to launch, open a notebook and start writing ASAP without dealing with the cognitive overhead that Notion presents with it's quirky "Template/Empty Page" options. Did I mention that I can write notes in any editor (I use VS Code) and Joplin will simply `watch` for changes on that file and save it in your notebook? :D
So basically I am in full control of my data, something any Notion user can never claim. I also love the fact that the code is OSS, the APIs are open and it allows me to build tools on top of Joplin to use it the way I like. And I don't have to worry for the day, the VC funding of Notion dries up and I am left with no option but to move to some other SASS product.
Another vote for Joplin here. All my notes are synced to Fastmail's WebDAV endpoint, I own all my data and can export it as plain markdown at any time.
The only feature it's lacking for me currently is a Drafts-like quick capture action on the iOS version.
Notion looks like one more super-hyped web-app, who will get insane amounts of VC money and start adding features no one needs or wants just to spend it all. Then it'll be a bloated mess that's not quick or easy to use.
What I would support is a note-taking solution, that is run like Basecamp. No VC money, no immense hype, just people dogfooding their own product and keeping it lean, functional and profitable.
The only feature it's lacking for me currently is a Drafts-like quick capture action on the iOS version.
Notion looks like one more super-hyped web-app, who will get insane amounts of VC money and start adding features no one needs or wants just to spend it all. Then it'll be a bloated mess that's not quick or easy to use.
What I would support is a note-taking solution, that is run like Basecamp. No VC money, no immense hype, just people dogfooding their own product and keeping it lean, functional and profitable.
I had a really bad experience with Notion, used it for some time, hit some arbitrary 1000 block limit that no matter what I deleted I couldn't get rid of.
Now I rely on vimwiki and fzf. More robust and future-proof. Who knows how long Notion will be around?
Now I rely on vimwiki and fzf. More robust and future-proof. Who knows how long Notion will be around?
I was using vimwiki for a while, but have since switched to notational-fzf-vim[1], which is basically Notational Velocity for Vim, powered by fzf and ripgrep. So far, it's exactly what I've been looking for.
Come to think of it, I don't see why you couldn't use both vimwiki and notational-fzf-vim. That might be pretty good actually.
[1]: https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim
Come to think of it, I don't see why you couldn't use both vimwiki and notational-fzf-vim. That might be pretty good actually.
[1]: https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim
(Notion here) This update gets rid of of that exact block limit for personal use. We do hope and plan to be around for awhile. We're profitable and have raised money to ensure we're able to invest in the product for the long-term (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup...).
If they only had a native Mac application.
I love Notion, but the Mac client feels so sluggish, I didn’t investigative but looks like a web view or Electron or something similar.
I love Notion, but the Mac client feels so sluggish, I didn’t investigative but looks like a web view or Electron or something similar.
Correct, it's Electron. And yes, I wish it were native, too.
I've been comparing Trello and Notion recently, and even though both use Electron, Trello feels infinitely faster.
Trello can be toggled with a global hotkey with absolutely no delay, while re-opening the Notion window or loading another Notion page takes quite a while. It is a day and night difference for note taking.
Trello can be toggled with a global hotkey with absolutely no delay, while re-opening the Notion window or loading another Notion page takes quite a while. It is a day and night difference for note taking.
I think that Notion can't be implemented other than Web technologies because it should support many features for many platforms. I generally don't like Electron but I accept for Notion.
I agree, too sluggish for me to bother.
After Evernote started going downhill, I moved to plain markdown inside a Google Drive folder.
I use the best, native app for each platform and have zero risk of being affected by a single company cancelling, closing,, increasing the price etc..
Notion does seem pretty interesting, but if they ever shut, stop innovating, or are outshined by a competitor, I don't fancy the idea of moving everything
Notion does seem pretty interesting, but if they ever shut, stop innovating, or are outshined by a competitor, I don't fancy the idea of moving everything
How is Evernote going downhill?
I'm not in love with it, but it works and I have a client everywhere I need one. It's text recognition in images is one of the killer features (I save snapshots of whiteboards), the other is searching metadata.
I'm not in love with it, but it works and I have a client everywhere I need one. It's text recognition in images is one of the killer features (I save snapshots of whiteboards), the other is searching metadata.
Agreed. I've been burned way too many times by companies being acquired (few months later product is sunset), shut down, or are forced to aggressively monetize.
Can you recommend a markdown native app for Windows? Currently switching to simple markdown notes myself but a bit annoyed always opening VS Code for a tiny note.
On Mac I use Ulysses. I hate that they switched to a subscription, but it's still the best Markdown app on the platform.
On Linux I use typora (previously caret when it basically shut down). typora and caret are built on web technologies and cross platform.
Oh Android I used to use and recommend JotterPad, but they've disgraced themselves and moved previously paid features (which I bought!) to a subscription, so I don't have an Android app anymore :(.
On Linux I use typora (previously caret when it basically shut down). typora and caret are built on web technologies and cross platform.
Oh Android I used to use and recommend JotterPad, but they've disgraced themselves and moved previously paid features (which I bought!) to a subscription, so I don't have an Android app anymore :(.
Notable is great and open source.
https://notable.md/
https://notable.md/
According to https://github.com/notable/notable/blob/master/SOURCE_CODE.m... the current version is no longer open-source.
There is also NixNote GPLv2 desktop Evernote client:
http://nixnote.org/NixNote-Home/
https://github.com/baumgarr/nixnote2
http://nixnote.org/NixNote-Home/
https://github.com/baumgarr/nixnote2
I've been happy with Markdown Edit. As a native app with an embedded webview, it's just a bit snappier than most of the Electron-based Markdown editors I've tried.
https://mike-ward.net/Markdown-Edit/
https://mike-ward.net/Markdown-Edit/
i like using marktext. its a single document editor instead of a note manager like notable or evernote, but it also has a sidebar where you can add a folder.
https://marktext.app
im not sure if its actually native though or whether its using electron... but i think ghostwriter is. tried that for a while. pretty much the same as marktext just without a sidebar
https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter
https://marktext.app
im not sure if its actually native though or whether its using electron... but i think ghostwriter is. tried that for a while. pretty much the same as marktext just without a sidebar
https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter
IA Writer has a Windows version.
Mark Text
You aren't really missing much with Notion. It's over engineered and to easy to mess around with hours when you should be getting things done.
I don't think Notion is for everyone. One of the limitations that I’ve seen with products like Notion is permissions. They don't offer granular permissions for viewing and editing down to the column, row or cell level. That is one of the reasons why I created cloudternal.com.
I'm interested in Notion, but I can't get over the fact that they use a Somalia TLD for their app. I'm just not sure why they have to use this TLD for what I assume is vanity purposes, and I think there are security implications to using it.
This is a perfect example of an app that you would want to self-host rather than give random people your personal data on a plate. The ability to self-host should be taught at schools so that everybody should be independent and actually own their own data.
I paid for Notion for a little over a year. Ultimately, though, I migrated to using Zim backed by Dropbox. I just didn't need the powerful features of Notion. I only needed a wiki with a desktop interface and cloud storage.
A couple of months ago, I published a blog post* about maintaining my personal knowledge base as a software engineer. Notion plays a significant role in this setup.
I do agree with others that Notion's flexibility can turn into a problem. Therefore, it is essential to clearly define use cases and conventions. Luckily, you don't have to argue about those with anyone else if you use it as a personal knowledge base ;)
* https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-ba...
I do agree with others that Notion's flexibility can turn into a problem. Therefore, it is essential to clearly define use cases and conventions. Luckily, you don't have to argue about those with anyone else if you use it as a personal knowledge base ;)
* https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-ba...
I'd be grateful if one of you product design folks could explain the rampant use of emoji. I notice that most things incorporate emoji extensively these days. Has that been shown to boost engagement or something?
Side note: Basecamp is also free for personal use now: https://basecamp.com/personal
Still clinging onto OneNote 2016, the last version that allows you to store your data locally.
There are some things - like personal notes - that really don't need to live in the cloud.
There are some things - like personal notes - that really don't need to live in the cloud.
I'm wondering how this impacts existing paying users. As far as I understand, by downgrading, we'd lose access to current 30-day revision history and access to an API that's still Coming Soon™.
I guess it makes sense to downgrade until API is actually released. "Coming soon" messaging seems promising, but yet again, it's been on their priority list for at least half a year now. Seems hardly justified to spend another $30 or so waiting for it.
I guess it makes sense to downgrade until API is actually released. "Coming soon" messaging seems promising, but yet again, it's been on their priority list for at least half a year now. Seems hardly justified to spend another $30 or so waiting for it.
API, please. Using a jack of all trades like Notion doesn't make any sense to me unless it comes with a decent way to integrate it with 3rd parties. Its features are surely impressive, but without a proper API Notion will be like a fancy metropolis without any connection with the outside world. People have been asking Notion to provide a usable API for a long time now: it's a shame that the company doesn't even bother to provide an ETA.
As a user of Apple Notes for personal and OneNote for work. What are the benefits of Notion - i have the app installed, but i always default to basic apple notes.
I love apple notes for its simplicity too but I think it lacks a good search engine and taking down technical notes with code
I use basecamp for my personal organization. calendar, to-dos and share with my spouse. Its perfect. It's intuitive and easy to use. why not basecamp ?
I love Basecamp as a company, but it doesn't work as a generic note taking application.
I want to open my note taking solution, preferably with a shortcut and be able to jot down my thoughts right there. Plain text is fine, but markdown is preferred.
After I'm done writing, I can spend 10 seconds adding a tag or two so I can find it again using smart filters or searches.
I want to open my note taking solution, preferably with a shortcut and be able to jot down my thoughts right there. Plain text is fine, but markdown is preferred.
After I'm done writing, I can spend 10 seconds adding a tag or two so I can find it again using smart filters or searches.
Seems like people in this thread want an E2EE alternative. May I mention https://standardnotes.org/.
It's a very well built notes app, cross-platform. The dev team makes really solid decisions (they say no more than any other company to feature requests).
I'm in no way affiliated to them, just a happy paid customer who agrees with their mission and values.
It's a very well built notes app, cross-platform. The dev team makes really solid decisions (they say no more than any other company to feature requests).
I'm in no way affiliated to them, just a happy paid customer who agrees with their mission and values.
I hope the founders of Notion will read this.
I really love Notion. It's filling the vacuum left by Evernote, once Evernote started spamming the hell out of its users.
I like how it's built with a "developer" mentality: there are things that you can do that require a little learning, but become very powerful productivity shortcuts.
What I really, really HATE about Notion is how they handle using it offline. At least for me, every few weeks it happens that I get logged out of Notion, and I couldn't have access to my files offline. It happened to me twice on a plane, and it was frustrating because I needed to access the information.
The other thing that I am not sure about is how they handle security. I've simply been lazy not to read enough about it, but perhaps Notion could make it more clear.
Overall, great job guys. (p.s. I live two blocks from your office, I'd love to come and say hello post-covid if you'd like. My email is my HN username @ gmail.)
I really love Notion. It's filling the vacuum left by Evernote, once Evernote started spamming the hell out of its users.
I like how it's built with a "developer" mentality: there are things that you can do that require a little learning, but become very powerful productivity shortcuts.
What I really, really HATE about Notion is how they handle using it offline. At least for me, every few weeks it happens that I get logged out of Notion, and I couldn't have access to my files offline. It happened to me twice on a plane, and it was frustrating because I needed to access the information.
The other thing that I am not sure about is how they handle security. I've simply been lazy not to read enough about it, but perhaps Notion could make it more clear.
Overall, great job guys. (p.s. I live two blocks from your office, I'd love to come and say hello post-covid if you'd like. My email is my HN username @ gmail.)
Does Notion work offline?I tried Notion way back when they launched, but at the time I was not willing to pay for it. I then switched to Coda, which was free, but had awful offline capabilities. I then gave up for a while and just went back to google documents which loaded offline without any issues.
Not yet but it's on their roadmap.
When are we going to get dependency graphs?
I want a ticket to be able to 'depend' on another ticket in a visually satisfying way like a dependency graph view.
Dependencies are such a huge part of ticketing systems but they don't seem to be treated with first class attention.
I want a ticket to be able to 'depend' on another ticket in a visually satisfying way like a dependency graph view.
Dependencies are such a huge part of ticketing systems but they don't seem to be treated with first class attention.
[deleted]
Last week, Notion leaked this pricing change accidentally on their dev instance. [0]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23186295
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23186295
I'm long Notion. I've been using it since the beginning, and it's hard to beat its flexibility. I had a brief stint using plain markdown, but at the end of the day, most of the notes I'm taking are meant to be shared.
Not sure if it's the rich formatting or customization, but I find myself coming back to notes and utilizing them much more frequently in Notion than I did with plain text.
The latest releases have resolved some of my larger issues like performance, search, and quick notes on mobile. I'm happy they're making their product more accessible, and I'm looking forward to the API.
Not sure if it's the rich formatting or customization, but I find myself coming back to notes and utilizing them much more frequently in Notion than I did with plain text.
The latest releases have resolved some of my larger issues like performance, search, and quick notes on mobile. I'm happy they're making their product more accessible, and I'm looking forward to the API.
I tried and failed at using Notion due to a lack of recurring tasks. Also a lot of what was said on here about being too unstructured of an environment.
I found myself wasting time setting things up and then not using them. I found the community full of people bragging about the beautiful minimalism of their dashboards. I'm not sure if anyone is "getting things done," however.
I'd be willing to pay Notion for the ability to use recurring tasks, but they seem interested in solving every other problem with their platform before tackling recurring tasks.
I found myself wasting time setting things up and then not using them. I found the community full of people bragging about the beautiful minimalism of their dashboards. I'm not sure if anyone is "getting things done," however.
I'd be willing to pay Notion for the ability to use recurring tasks, but they seem interested in solving every other problem with their platform before tackling recurring tasks.
Notion's lack of 2FA, user roles, or the ability to enforce (only) Google OAuth makes it a non-starter for any real use cases in a tech company (ticket/task management, product planning, employee wiki, etc.). We wanted to use it, but their lax stance on security made us go elsewhere, even though the entire team loved the product as an all-in-one solution to product. I found an old conversation on Twitter dating back a couple years of Notion telling a customer that 2FA is on the roadmap, which was unfortunate.
I love notion. I want to support them and I hope they and their product continue to grow and improve. But I can't help facepalming a little bit as I just bought 1 year of notion.
Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion? I have a friend that works at a small company who is absolutely nuts about it (every single one of his tweets is about it), but I also have seen other people say it's a convoluted mess once you get above a certain size and they regret ever going down that path.
Also curious if anyone has comments on how it compares to similar apps like Dropbox Paper (which Notion seems like a direct clone of) or Quip.
Also curious if anyone has comments on how it compares to similar apps like Dropbox Paper (which Notion seems like a direct clone of) or Quip.
Notion gives you a number of options for structuring data (tables, datatypes, formatting) and collaborating (great comment/tagging system + nice doc hierarchy). As a builder I have to say that it's a really nice product. The interaction design is extremely good, but.....
IMO the biggest issue with these sorts of better-mousetrap documents/business tools is that they add another application to your organization. They're almost all slightly better than Confluence/GSuite (and I say that as a GSuite fan), but my team already runs our SSO/Email etc through GSuite and our issue tracking through Jira. Even with better functionality, maintaining another tool can turn the value proposition negative for scaling companies due to time spent on enablement, vendor negotiation, change management, wrangling of docs, security, etc.
Of course, these products like to sell/market via guerrilla, bottoms-up strategies propelled by their great design and natural appeal: the people introducing them to organizations are typically insulated from the negative logistical externalities. This allows them to dodge a top-down procurement process that would have much higher requirements. There's a whole organizational question of whether it's best for your company to accept new bottoms-up tools that incrementally improve efficiency, or accepting "worse" tools that simplify the overall logistics of running a team.
Fwiw my team also used Dropbox Paper in the early days of the product, and the story then was quite similar to Notion (we weren't customers of Dropbox's storage product).
IMO the biggest issue with these sorts of better-mousetrap documents/business tools is that they add another application to your organization. They're almost all slightly better than Confluence/GSuite (and I say that as a GSuite fan), but my team already runs our SSO/Email etc through GSuite and our issue tracking through Jira. Even with better functionality, maintaining another tool can turn the value proposition negative for scaling companies due to time spent on enablement, vendor negotiation, change management, wrangling of docs, security, etc.
Of course, these products like to sell/market via guerrilla, bottoms-up strategies propelled by their great design and natural appeal: the people introducing them to organizations are typically insulated from the negative logistical externalities. This allows them to dodge a top-down procurement process that would have much higher requirements. There's a whole organizational question of whether it's best for your company to accept new bottoms-up tools that incrementally improve efficiency, or accepting "worse" tools that simplify the overall logistics of running a team.
Fwiw my team also used Dropbox Paper in the early days of the product, and the story then was quite similar to Notion (we weren't customers of Dropbox's storage product).
The best way to understand notion is as a relational database. You can build arbitrary collections (tables) of "cards" and choose structured properties (columns) on them. The "body" of the card itself is a standard markdown note.
The way you can display these cards is also very flexible (views): kanban, a table, list, gallery, etc with easy to setup filtering and sorting options. You can have multiple views attached to each collection (e.g. a KanBan board for team project managment and a separate "my TODOs" list)
The most powerful part is when you start to setup relations (foreign keys) between tables, which allows you to use all the power of relational data using GUI point and click. Anyone familiar with SQL (or Django ORM) will feel right at home with Foreign key, and reverse relationships.
The reason people are so excited about notion is that it "democratizes" the power of database — to non-technical people.
The way you can display these cards is also very flexible (views): kanban, a table, list, gallery, etc with easy to setup filtering and sorting options. You can have multiple views attached to each collection (e.g. a KanBan board for team project managment and a separate "my TODOs" list)
The most powerful part is when you start to setup relations (foreign keys) between tables, which allows you to use all the power of relational data using GUI point and click. Anyone familiar with SQL (or Django ORM) will feel right at home with Foreign key, and reverse relationships.
The reason people are so excited about notion is that it "democratizes" the power of database — to non-technical people.
The killer feature that made me switch from OneNote is that when you add dates you can set it to remind you before they pass. Some ways I've used this:
- Implementing GTD, when I move a task to "waiting" I add a date when I want to be reminded to check on it.
- I create a new table quarterly with a row for each week with columns for goals (e.g. practice Spanish or get out running 3x), then embed date reminders for each one so I don't forget to keep it updated.
- I keep a table of annual subscriptions I pay for, with the date the payment occurs, and a reminder a few weeks earlier. This way I can decide whether I want to renew (this alone has paid for the cost of Notion).
- Implementing GTD, when I move a task to "waiting" I add a date when I want to be reminded to check on it.
- I create a new table quarterly with a row for each week with columns for goals (e.g. practice Spanish or get out running 3x), then embed date reminders for each one so I don't forget to keep it updated.
- I keep a table of annual subscriptions I pay for, with the date the payment occurs, and a reminder a few weeks earlier. This way I can decide whether I want to renew (this alone has paid for the cost of Notion).
I used Evernote for years and switched to Notion like 2 years ago. I use it on a daily basis, mainly to take/read notes at work and track articles/papers I've read, but also to track movies/series/books/games I've seen/read/played (the "database" template is great for that), track gym sessions and keep a grocery check list.
While it's a good product (and now totally free), I don't really get why people are absolutely nuts about it all over Twitter. There is also like a Notion community, organizing Notion meetups and events. That's kinda beyond me. At the end of the day, it's just a note taking app.
While it's a good product (and now totally free), I don't really get why people are absolutely nuts about it all over Twitter. There is also like a Notion community, organizing Notion meetups and events. That's kinda beyond me. At the end of the day, it's just a note taking app.
Used Dropbox Paper before Notion. Paper is great for stand-alone documents. I even made a nice presentation using it because it was quicker than using Google Slides.
I've been using Notion for 3+ years now and I've been happily paying for it. The main reason I went away from Dropbox for organizing and writing is b/c each Paper document felt like a separate piece of work. In Notion, documents are easily linked, workspaces are a starting point and there's child documents and sibling documents that can help keep things organized. I have over 200+ documents and about 3 months ago the search started to feel sluggish and they updated their search code and it now feels pretty fast again.
It's not all perfect though, with 3+ years of use, I can tell you their mobile apps have come a long way but still don't feel as native as some other writing apps (iA Writer).
My final thoughts are that if you're hearing good things about it and haven't given it a shot, try it for a 1-2 week period and see how it works for you. Some people like the way it does 90% of the things and others hate the same things ️
I've been using Notion for 3+ years now and I've been happily paying for it. The main reason I went away from Dropbox for organizing and writing is b/c each Paper document felt like a separate piece of work. In Notion, documents are easily linked, workspaces are a starting point and there's child documents and sibling documents that can help keep things organized. I have over 200+ documents and about 3 months ago the search started to feel sluggish and they updated their search code and it now feels pretty fast again.
It's not all perfect though, with 3+ years of use, I can tell you their mobile apps have come a long way but still don't feel as native as some other writing apps (iA Writer).
My final thoughts are that if you're hearing good things about it and haven't given it a shot, try it for a 1-2 week period and see how it works for you. Some people like the way it does 90% of the things and others hate the same things ️
It's a nice wiki with some interesting database features (a la airtable). Writing in it is pretty nice because it's basically markdown.
I'd stopped using it because it was too easy to outgrow the free plan. Now with unlimited pages I'll give it another shot but I'm still not sold on its benefits vs storing all my notes locally in plain markdown files.
I'd stopped using it because it was too easy to outgrow the free plan. Now with unlimited pages I'll give it another shot but I'm still not sold on its benefits vs storing all my notes locally in plain markdown files.
I'd also recommend Gitbook. They've improved their search features recently and I'd say they're on a similar level to Notion.
We used it for our company wiki. Wanted to use Notion but for 500 users the Notion quote came out 15x more expensive so it was a no-brainer!
We used it for our company wiki. Wanted to use Notion but for 500 users the Notion quote came out 15x more expensive so it was a no-brainer!
> Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion?
Have you ever used Confluence? If not, have you ever used any Atlassian products? Atlassian is all over corp structures, and everything they make is painful to use without a training course or the desire to immerse yourself in boring-as-shit documentation. A lot of corps jumping onto Notion are jumping off of Confluence.
Have you ever used Confluence? If not, have you ever used any Atlassian products? Atlassian is all over corp structures, and everything they make is painful to use without a training course or the desire to immerse yourself in boring-as-shit documentation. A lot of corps jumping onto Notion are jumping off of Confluence.
>Have you ever used Confluence?
Yes. Is Notion a Confluence competitor?
I guess I'm struggling to understand it because my aforementioned friend talks about how he uses Notion for basically every possible use case under the sun (probably even some where it's not meant for that but he found some way to finagle it). Based on that knowledge, I still don't really know what Notion is meant for other than being just-another-note-taking-app-that-supports-markdown-and-embedded-pics.
Yes. Is Notion a Confluence competitor?
I guess I'm struggling to understand it because my aforementioned friend talks about how he uses Notion for basically every possible use case under the sun (probably even some where it's not meant for that but he found some way to finagle it). Based on that knowledge, I still don't really know what Notion is meant for other than being just-another-note-taking-app-that-supports-markdown-and-embedded-pics.
I don't think it's especially great at note taking. I'd prefer a different directory structure for that.
The love for it makes more sense if you think of it as a really simple website builder. You can have a database of pages with structured data, unstructured data, and nice layout. That sounds simple, but it covers a lot of use cases.
If you check out communities talking about Notion, you'll see the layout stuff is huge. You might even think it's overboard, to the point of productivity porn. But if you're the kind of person who cares about that (think the girl in middle school who took notes with 6 colored pens) or you want to make something pleasing to use for a tiny organization, you can end up falling in love with it.
The love for it makes more sense if you think of it as a really simple website builder. You can have a database of pages with structured data, unstructured data, and nice layout. That sounds simple, but it covers a lot of use cases.
If you check out communities talking about Notion, you'll see the layout stuff is huge. You might even think it's overboard, to the point of productivity porn. But if you're the kind of person who cares about that (think the girl in middle school who took notes with 6 colored pens) or you want to make something pleasing to use for a tiny organization, you can end up falling in love with it.
>to the point of productivity porn
I think this is what's mostly caused some confusion for me, so thanks for taking the time to explain it a bit. I've seen tons of stuff about how to customize Notion to fit personal preferences and specific layouts, and that kind of drowns out the actual discussion about what those customizations/layouts are used to accomplish.
I think this is what's mostly caused some confusion for me, so thanks for taking the time to explain it a bit. I've seen tons of stuff about how to customize Notion to fit personal preferences and specific layouts, and that kind of drowns out the actual discussion about what those customizations/layouts are used to accomplish.
I really don't mean to be rude, but why don't you just read their homepage (and the one posted here)? It should answer most of your questions. (Hint: It really is _way_ more than "just-another-note-taking-app-that-supports-markdown-and-embedded-pics".)
https://www.notion.so/
https://www.notion.so/
Because I have read their homepage (multiple times) and I find it to be nothing more than marketing speak that doesn't actually explain what it does or what it's good for, nor does it convey actual human experience using the product (which HN is excellent at discussing).
"With Notion, all your work is in one place" is a terrible descriptor of a product.
"With Notion, all your work is in one place" is a terrible descriptor of a product.
Uhh... Have you tried reading past that? They literally list pretty much all of the most important features right there (though I believe not all of them). They even show which services each feature replaces. It's true there is marketing speak sprinkled throughout it, but all in all it's the opposite of the "nothing but marketing speak" trend most services follow.
Yes. Here are some excerpts from the (very minimally descriptive) page:
> Write better. Think more clearly. Get organized.
Totally useless in terms of explaining what the product is.
>A simple, beautiful writing experience, with 30+ types of content to add.
Great, so I can... write things in it? What are these 30 types of content? It doesn't even give examples.
> Turn your tribal knowledge into easy-to-find answers.
How does it do this? No explanation given.
> Kanban boards, tables, lists, and more.
"and more"? And more what? This is what I'm trying to get information on.
> Lightweight and flexible.
Flexible how? This phrase is meaningless to me.
This is one of the more marketing speak ridden websites I've encountered.
If someone made a post on HN asking people to compare and contrast, say, AWS vs Azure, would your response be "just go read the AWS website duh"?
Take a look at the other comments in this thread and ask yourself if the Notion website conveys even half of the insight that the other commenters have provided. Those comments are the entire point of HN, not "just go read the website".
> Write better. Think more clearly. Get organized.
Totally useless in terms of explaining what the product is.
>A simple, beautiful writing experience, with 30+ types of content to add.
Great, so I can... write things in it? What are these 30 types of content? It doesn't even give examples.
> Turn your tribal knowledge into easy-to-find answers.
How does it do this? No explanation given.
> Kanban boards, tables, lists, and more.
"and more"? And more what? This is what I'm trying to get information on.
> Lightweight and flexible.
Flexible how? This phrase is meaningless to me.
This is one of the more marketing speak ridden websites I've encountered.
If someone made a post on HN asking people to compare and contrast, say, AWS vs Azure, would your response be "just go read the AWS website duh"?
Take a look at the other comments in this thread and ask yourself if the Notion website conveys even half of the insight that the other commenters have provided. Those comments are the entire point of HN, not "just go read the website".
I just read it again and it's true there's a lot of marketing speak, but it seems you've been blinded by it and ignored all of the rest.
It's great to have these questions and insightful answers. The thing is you've said your friend is nuts about it, but apparently haven't bothered to ask them the same questions you're asking here. Not only that, you do seem to be fairly interested in knowing what it's about, but you don't seem to have read anything about it at all, so maybe you could have at least followed the hacker spirit and... I don't know, scanned for the links on the top of the page... and formed a basic opinion?
https://www.notion.so/product
https://www.notion.so/wikis (I've just seen you can even try a live demo without signing up)
https://www.notion.so/projects
https://www.notion.so/notes
(There are more, but I believe you get the idea)
It's great to have these questions and insightful answers. The thing is you've said your friend is nuts about it, but apparently haven't bothered to ask them the same questions you're asking here. Not only that, you do seem to be fairly interested in knowing what it's about, but you don't seem to have read anything about it at all, so maybe you could have at least followed the hacker spirit and... I don't know, scanned for the links on the top of the page... and formed a basic opinion?
https://www.notion.so/product
https://www.notion.so/wikis (I've just seen you can even try a live demo without signing up)
https://www.notion.so/projects
https://www.notion.so/notes
(There are more, but I believe you get the idea)
>so maybe you could have at least followed the hacker spirit and... I don't know, scanned for the links on the top of the page... and formed a basic opinion?
or I could ask about it on a forum that is dedicated to discussing topics exactly like this? As you can see, other commenters have given some great insight that is infinitely more helpful than "just go read the website", and is definitely more insightful than the website itself could ever be. I thank them greatly for their insight.
or I could ask about it on a forum that is dedicated to discussing topics exactly like this? As you can see, other commenters have given some great insight that is infinitely more helpful than "just go read the website", and is definitely more insightful than the website itself could ever be. I thank them greatly for their insight.
To be clear, I didn't say you shouldn't have asked. I just suggested you inform yourself minimally before you do. I believe this is better for everyone involved, but ymmv.
I feel like you're nit-picking this to depth. Most of the answers you've mentioned may not exist on the homepage but within one click. Under the Product menu, there's a bunch more contextual detail.
I'm not sure why you would expect the main page to list, individually, 30+ types of content. Do you similarly complain that the homepage for Lightroom doesn't say that you can edit the following parameters on an image:
* Lens Correction - Chromatic Aberration, Profile Corrections, Distortion, Vignetting
* Basic - Color Profile, White Balance, Temperature, Tint, Tone, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance, Saturation
* Transform - Auto, Guided, Level, Vertical, Full, Rotation, Aspect, Scale, X Offset, Y Offset
* Tone Curve - Regional and Global Highlights, Lights, Darks, Shadows, Point Curves
* HSL / Color - Change hue for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple, Magenta. Change saturation for same. Change Luminance for same.
* Split Toning, Highlights (Hue, Saturation), Shadows (same), balance between two.
* Details: Sharpening (amount, radius, detail, masking), Noise Reduction (luminance, detail, contrast)
... and so on.
Or do you settle for "Wide ranging, comprehensive non-destructive image editing"?
> What are these 30 types of content? It doesn't even give examples.
There are, just off the main page.
I'm just not sure what you're expecting is at all reasonable of any product. The main page draws you in, and the Product page breaks it down by use context. You're certainly entitled to "I don't want to have to go to any additional pages", but that doesn't work for anything more than the simplest products.
I'm not sure why you would expect the main page to list, individually, 30+ types of content. Do you similarly complain that the homepage for Lightroom doesn't say that you can edit the following parameters on an image:
* Lens Correction - Chromatic Aberration, Profile Corrections, Distortion, Vignetting
* Basic - Color Profile, White Balance, Temperature, Tint, Tone, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance, Saturation
* Transform - Auto, Guided, Level, Vertical, Full, Rotation, Aspect, Scale, X Offset, Y Offset
* Tone Curve - Regional and Global Highlights, Lights, Darks, Shadows, Point Curves
* HSL / Color - Change hue for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple, Magenta. Change saturation for same. Change Luminance for same.
* Split Toning, Highlights (Hue, Saturation), Shadows (same), balance between two.
* Details: Sharpening (amount, radius, detail, masking), Noise Reduction (luminance, detail, contrast)
... and so on.
Or do you settle for "Wide ranging, comprehensive non-destructive image editing"?
> What are these 30 types of content? It doesn't even give examples.
There are, just off the main page.
I'm just not sure what you're expecting is at all reasonable of any product. The main page draws you in, and the Product page breaks it down by use context. You're certainly entitled to "I don't want to have to go to any additional pages", but that doesn't work for anything more than the simplest products.
> Yes. Is Notion a Confluence competitor?
Yes. I don't know why you're getting such convoluted answers from others.
Yes. I don't know why you're getting such convoluted answers from others.
Notion is basically an app framework with a standardized UI surface and a couple of apps built in. So it’s not surprising that your friend is using it for almost anything the same way you can use Ruby on Rails to build anything.
It doesn't really have very good integrations as of now. Like GitHub, GitLab issues etc.
>Anyone mind giving me a TL;DR on the value proposition/use case of Notion?
There isn't one.
Notion blasted the Youtube Selfhelp/Productivity space with sponsored videos to get a buzz going and now are moving to continue their growth story by offering a free tier.
It's designed to convert your productivity into minuscule parts to convince you that you are achieving goals. Akin to playing a game.
There isn't one.
Notion blasted the Youtube Selfhelp/Productivity space with sponsored videos to get a buzz going and now are moving to continue their growth story by offering a free tier.
It's designed to convert your productivity into minuscule parts to convince you that you are achieving goals. Akin to playing a game.
Notion is a great workspace app. I am extremely impressed with the polish and flexibility that it provides. I'm surprised they're opening up to everyone, but I guess - growth - is the goal for everyone so it makes sense.
I've been working on a similar app (https://usebustl.com) focusing on project management. However in doing so I've really come to appreciate how much of a quality product Notion is.
I've been working on a similar app (https://usebustl.com) focusing on project management. However in doing so I've really come to appreciate how much of a quality product Notion is.
Notion is absolutely amazing, I love the /code snippet, the seamless sharing a page with a url and the UX. I hope Apple doesn't buy them.
This is much more sensible; their previous 10,000 block limit was rather fishy. I only gave it a shot for few minutes, when there was hype around it and those blocks filled up fast. I was like, "So I invest my time moving my notes to Notion, and by the time I've done all the work in setting up and am invested, they need payment. Where's the free tier?"
I've been a user of Notion for two years now switching from Evernote. But the biggest reason was for the tree view which in Evernote is only done using tags. Are there other note apps that off a tree view?
Also Notion seems to store code blocks without formatting them, I found that in Evernote, the backtick and single quotes would get formatted even inside a code block.
Also Notion seems to store code blocks without formatting them, I found that in Evernote, the backtick and single quotes would get formatted even inside a code block.
Why does Notion not have a GitHub integration? Kind of a dealbreaker for using it on any tech team unless you just want a wiki.
I like Notion. Mostly using it for personal stuff with tables, like grocery list, expenses and domains archive.
Also recently build a resources hub on a custom domain using Notion and open-source toolkit Fruition.
Pretty happy with the result. https://resources.remotejobs.center
Also recently build a resources hub on a custom domain using Notion and open-source toolkit Fruition.
Pretty happy with the result. https://resources.remotejobs.center
If I’ve understood it right, looking at the homepage and the FAQ, Notion is tied to its own cloud service for storing information, and there’s no way to use it as a standalone app storing data locally and sync information through an unrelated service on my own (using, say, Dropbox for example)? If yes, then this is not for me.
I switched to Joplin when I bumped up against Notion's limits. It's a little more setup than a cloud app, but it's completely seamless once it's running. The most complicated part is adding Joplin to system startup for the web clipper server. All it needs is a real rich editor and a preview on the clipper.
I have to admit, SV has really cracked and disrupted the note taking industry. Evernote, OneNote, Asana, Trello, JIRA, ToDoist, and now Notion. I tried most of it and just gave up and started to capture my notes in Google docs and Todos in spreadsheet. Now that we have disrupted this space, we will soon move on to flying cars
Its amazing that i had just posted a link of Notion in the twitter and Linkedin for a tool to use as daily driver and just in few hours it shows up here. To be honest, its a good tool to learn from and master but it needs to be open sourced to grow much better.
Notion is just an idea coming live like once Linkedin or GitHub was. We need a platform to integrate all other tools in a single place and it will take a lot of efforts.
There are 2 ways to achieve it.
1. Private like Notion
2. Public like ?
I personally feel all big companies must release api's( if they don't already) and work in harmony to create an ultimate plug and use workspace system.
Due to rapid growing of Tech stacks and tools every day.
This is once of the biggest product i can see in futures to come.
I read comments about security and how people wanted it real bad. To implement security in product like Notion, it might need a rework from scratch as they this was probably not a concern when they started it and as it grows it will be difficult to even integrate it again this is were an open source community comes into play and can be very helpful.
From views on Notion perspective is that this is the right time to go open source and let the world patch in. It's not a work that can be done in private as it's a huge pile of possibilities and requires an immense group of talented people to make it a success.
Why don't i do it then? Well i can definitely start a repo but my lack of experience, skills will easily out-number me by people who are better. I can be a good thinker and a decision maker and a leader but this thing needs support from amazing people and a repo is generally successful because of immence tech skills in initial phase of development in open source.
From views on Notion perspective is that this is the right time to go open source and let the world patch in. It's not a work that can be done in private as it's a huge pile of possibilities and requires an immense group of talented people to make it a success.
Why don't i do it then? Well i can definitely start a repo but my lack of experience, skills will easily out-number me by people who are better. I can be a good thinker and a decision maker and a leader but this thing needs support from amazing people and a repo is generally successful because of immence tech skills in initial phase of development in open source.
I can't believe that no one has brought up a Lotus Notes comparison yet. The Notion sales pitch feels very similar to the Notes one; everything in one place.
Notes itself was actually not that bad but it was very complex and usually turned into something it shouldn't have been - like an email server.
Notes itself was actually not that bad but it was very complex and usually turned into something it shouldn't have been - like an email server.
Can we talk about how slow it is? Literally the main reason I don't use this app (which seems so good for my use cases) is that it takes forever to start up on my phone. I can use it on my desktop but only because it's a fast machine - I could see a Macbook Air struggling to load it.
We just released some performance improvements across the board (improved mobile startup times from a ship a few days ago linked here: https://twitter.com/NotionHQ/status/1261037710665322496). We'd love if you could try it again and we'll definitely continue to work on this.
Using Notion is awesome, but does require you to bring your own structure. Templates help, but much like any other process in your organization, it requires occasional review to keep the team on the same page to keep it tidy and useful. It helps to have a champion/steward for it.
Good news.
But I've been using Roam [1] for a couple months and I don't know if I can live without "biderectional links" and "unliked references" anymore.
[1] https://roamresearch.com/
[1] https://roamresearch.com/
I wish there was a way to disable all the CSS transitions. Makes the UI feel unnecessarily laggy
Question to web-devs: I am using firefox with ublock. Notion, like a few other pages, load only as blank for me.
The only thing I have disabled are cookies and connections to trackers or ads. But cookies are not necessary to load a page. And adblocking is standard.
Does anyone know the reason?
The only thing I have disabled are cookies and connections to trackers or ads. But cookies are not necessary to load a page. And adblocking is standard.
Does anyone know the reason?
Do you have Privacy Badger running in firefox? It blocks hCaptcha, which Notion uses (unfortunately).
Notion was working a few days ago for me using firefox and ublock
I think Notion might actually work best in personal/small environments, and this seems like a smart move to encourage more of that kind of use. My exposure to it is at a large company, where it really does not work well.
Cool but please also add some basic API to the free personal version so I could export my notes and add items programmatically using a Python script (and also to let me author a GitHub Pages Markdown blog from Notion).
Those cartoons remind me of the Persepolis animated film:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(film)
I've never used Notion before.
So I signed up and after looking around for a minute or two I still have no idea what Notion is. It seems to be a way to create lists of rich to do items with dates?
Can someone ELI5 Notion to me?
So I signed up and after looking around for a minute or two I still have no idea what Notion is. It seems to be a way to create lists of rich to do items with dates?
Can someone ELI5 Notion to me?
Hi! Initially I had the same impression and my team had a hard time convincing me to give it a try. Since then I really started enjoying Notion though.
So, what is notion? I'd call it a flexible on-line data organizer. Notion gives you a concept of pages (which then can have subpages) and blocks. A block can be a text, a table, a todo list, a calendar, an embedded Tweet etc.
I think a good way to see what you can do with it is to use the templates - they are example pages that allow you to see what are Notion's capabilities.
A few examples of what I've used Notion for:
* tracking my job applications when I was looking for a new position
* notes on resources I'm using for an online course I'm working on (I have a plan for lessons, each lesson has attached resources)
* planning my holidays trip - it was a combination of todo list, map with our stops, list of hotels I booked etc.
* todo list when moving to another country
I've also seen it used as a team handbook, here's a public example by Blendle: https://www.notion.so/Blendle-s-Employee-Handbook-7692ffe24f...
So, what is notion? I'd call it a flexible on-line data organizer. Notion gives you a concept of pages (which then can have subpages) and blocks. A block can be a text, a table, a todo list, a calendar, an embedded Tweet etc.
I think a good way to see what you can do with it is to use the templates - they are example pages that allow you to see what are Notion's capabilities.
A few examples of what I've used Notion for:
* tracking my job applications when I was looking for a new position
* notes on resources I'm using for an online course I'm working on (I have a plan for lessons, each lesson has attached resources)
* planning my holidays trip - it was a combination of todo list, map with our stops, list of hotels I booked etc.
* todo list when moving to another country
I've also seen it used as a team handbook, here's a public example by Blendle: https://www.notion.so/Blendle-s-Employee-Handbook-7692ffe24f...
As an non-user and since a quick glance at the website helps little - what exactly is notions USP and what makes it different than a standard note taking app synchronous across platforms?
Am I going crazy or did this originally link to a blog post about using notion (rather than bookmarks etc) rather then to the notion site?
Can't seem to find the link anywhere....
I tried it a few months ago on Android. Almost impossible to use (for me) as the phone's back button makes the app close instead of, you know, going back to the previous screen
One way I have found Notion to be useful is writing book summaries, reviews and taking down notes. And I sometimes find myself crafting dashboards for project planning.
Is there anything like Notion the only allows .txt files and folders? I would be very interested in that. I tried doing it with a git repo but I want the auto-syncing.
Joplin is markdown, with cloud sync (gdrive, dropbox, webdav etc): https://joplinapp.org
Heard great things about Notion for a while so just signed up. First glance looks promising and can replace quite a few different tools we’re currently using.
Microsoft's recent announced open-source Fluid framework sounds very similar to this - I wonder if that played into their decision to make this free.
TL;DR for the people already paying $4/month:
You can downgrade to the free plan for which the number of blocks is not limited anymore, or keep paying paying $4/month for a bunch of extra features.
From the FAQ:
You can downgrade to the free plan for which the number of blocks is not limited anymore, or keep paying paying $4/month for a bunch of extra features.
From the FAQ:
What if I'm already paying for the old Personal Plan?
You've been automatically upgraded to our new Personal Pro Plan at no extra cost!
In addition to all the features of the free Personal Plan, Personal Pro includes:
- No limit on file uploads (5MB is the limit for free)
- Unlimited guest collaborators (5 guests is the limit for free)
- Version history up to 30 days
- Priority customer support
- API access (coming soon)
You can switch back to the free Personal Plan at any time.Thx. Very helpful TL;DR. I'm particularly excited about the "API access (coming soon)" part.
Currently use the Student plan, love Notion!
Do sometimes get lost and wonder if I'm doing things in the most optimal way though, it's so powerful.
Do sometimes get lost and wonder if I'm doing things in the most optimal way though, it's so powerful.
Notion has similarities to a tool I created for my own personal note taking 6 years ago, I should turn it into a platform and release it.
Notion would be a killer app for me if it used an open hypermedia protocol and the ability to run/link to my own endpoints.
Is there any way to export or backup Notion data to your own personal servers? I'd happily pay for a nice way to do that.
In the settings, I see an option to export to HTML or Markdown + CSV, plus a PDF option (enterprise-only).
I've just tried the HTML and it looks pretty good. CSS is at the beginning of each HTML and looks pretty similar to their light mode interface, no JavaScript gets loaded.
I've just tried the HTML and it looks pretty good. CSS is at the beginning of each HTML and looks pretty similar to their light mode interface, no JavaScript gets loaded.
There are just so many note-taking apps/services, it's really hard to tell what makes a given one stand out.
I literally just bought 1 year of Personal Pro last week after running a little week long trial 2 weeks ago.
Does Notion support APIs for automating data through external means? Or has it at least IFTTT-support?
No one mentioned roamresearch.com?
> Anabella is a software engineer with a love for visual design. Her resume is a public page in Notion, making it viewable to the many hiring managers out there browsing the web (and others who might share).
This is a weird testimonial. Any frontender should be making their own cool resume website, and not using a website generator!
This is a weird testimonial. Any frontender should be making their own cool resume website, and not using a website generator!
So this is basically an ad? Ugh.
Where is the backing store for Notion? Does it save locally, in cloud, customizable?
Holy shit. This might be the most beautiful piece of software I've ever used. The tutorial is perfect, the onboarding was super easy, and the Mac app is really responsive. And it's not owned by a huge corporation! I'm in love.
Does anyone have any deep-dive recommendations on how to get the most out of Notion?
Does anyone have any deep-dive recommendations on how to get the most out of Notion?
Check out Marie Poulin's work on YouTube. She also has a 'Notion Mastery' offering: https://mariepoulin.com/notion-mastery/
I can’t believe the number of note taking apps I just learned about in this thread
Such a great tool - so glad I gave it a shot, which made me fall in love with it.
Notion is the embodiment of busy work --> false sense of being productive.
Notion's just a tool, like a pen and a pad. If you decide to use it for nothing but busy work, that's an option I suppose. But I get a lot of real work done using Notion.
The act of using Notion is in of itself busy work which distracts from productivity.
Not that you are using it for busy work.
It's a strategy used by productivity "gurus" for 100+ years to keep the $$ trickling in.
Just a few years ago it was todist...before that it was Omni.
Once notion peaks we will all move on to the next one.
Not that you are using it for busy work.
It's a strategy used by productivity "gurus" for 100+ years to keep the $$ trickling in.
Just a few years ago it was todist...before that it was Omni.
Once notion peaks we will all move on to the next one.
According to this description I believe you could also say writing tests or using git is just busy work. Nevertheless, a lot of people use tools like git and notepad (or notion) to organize their work.
That doesn't make any sense. Notion is literally just a powerful text editor. If the act of using Notion is busywork, then so is the act of using a typewriter, a pen, a whiteboard, any other text editor, etc.
That's up to you, really. If you're prone to just making everything look pretty without actually using any of the data, you'll probably find a way to do the same with any other tool out there.
Currrently I use vimwiki + a cron job to push my wiki to a Gitlab repo
It actually deters me away that there is default content already there when I load the app. In my opinion, less is more and starting off with no content at all is a helpful cleaner alternative than having to delete all that default content.
True, but it sometimes helps to get you started. We wrote a simple "Get started" article for Emvi [1] which can be deleted quickly. But users send us mails asking for documentation, which we will add after beta. It's nice to have this documentation inside your workspace, but can get in your way too. I haven't decided what to prever.
[1] https://emvi.com/
[1] https://emvi.com/
Not sure about that. I got started in Notion by looking at the initial database they set up and modifying it to handle the use-case I was imagining. It was more effective than any tutorial would have been at helping me learn the product.
I wonder if this was decided because of pressure from Roam?
Brilliant! My free credits plan was about to expire.
Evernote
Airtable
Notion
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What is next?
What is next?
Nice idea, but for better or worse I equate Notion with work. So, I would rather not be reminded of work when organizing my personal life.
How this replaces Google Drive the other time I can't upload a file larger than 4gb ?!
It's not a replacement for Drive as most note taking app are... well for note taking and not file storages. I would recommend to use Dropbox if you want both in one tool or separate those two use cases.
https://www.notion.so/personal If you scroll down in this page you'll see they are saying it replace Google Drive
Okay... well that's not the case I guess.
You're the product.
Worthwhile warning. While I'm not privy to all of the details, management was considering to make a complete move Notion but the whole plan for whipped due to privacy and data ownership / confidentiality concerns.
Google Docs on steroids. I approve of it.
There are major disadvantages to using something like Notion for personal work - including non discoverability of work or thoughts. Most people are better of with pen and paper.
I've gone into further depth here: https://usedone.today/blog/posts/davinci/
I've gone into further depth here: https://usedone.today/blog/posts/davinci/
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1. Flexibility of blocks is a cognitive overhead for most folks in my team. They would rather prefer more constrained and opinionated approaches like Trello
2. Notion is currently a jack of all trades and master of none. We have tried to use it as a wiki, project tracker, issue tracker, CRM & spreadsheet. Though it's good to have one tool that can do many things, we quickly reach limits of what is possible automatically and have to spend a lot of time to manually maintain it
3. Convention over configuration creates problems for other team members to follow because conventions are not documented properly.
But I see a lot of potential of it becoming a platform. If they can incentivize 3rd parties to build over their platform and build trust, I think it's gonna be the next big thing. "One platform for all my data" with specialized tools to deal with different kinds of data. I can imagine tools like Tello, Jira, Hubspot, Google spreadsheets & draw.io running over it.