Notion Review | Notion

[ ] I wish there were customizable themes but I’m at least glad one can choose between Sans, Serif, and Monofonts.
[ ] I wish that themes made more sense (?) to me!
[ ] Undo/Redo is a little fucky.
[ ] ~~I would suggest the addition of a Spotlight-style quick launch prompt.~~ (And I normally kindof hate those, but really only when they occupy my favorite keyboard shortcuts for other functions, like in Atom’s case.) It already exists! The Quick Find tools is activated by Ctrl+P.
[ ] Longevity is one of my only worries regarding the investment of significant energy and time required to consolidate one's notetaking/documentation/organization into a single service like Notion. (Or any software/service/single product, for that matter.)
[ ] The absurd questions around file limits. ‣
[ ] It's important to consider the implications of committing to a single, for-profit service when one is about to spend a shitload of time configuring/documenting within it. How easy would it be to migrate if I got word Notion was shutting down for good in 2 hours? Where would I go?

In 2020, it is no doubt brave as fuck to declare your company to be Slack's missing half on your goddamned homepage, no less.

[ ] Even The Pudding is running Notion - I just found out because I mirrored their site locally with wget Documentation so I can finally rest easy about missing anything.
[ ] I have absolutely despised every abstract thing about about stock images and the practices that continue to further their use... and yet, Notion's direct integration with Unsplash is laughably intuitive and speedy. It'd be idiotic of me not to make use of it.

https://twitter.com/CJEller3/status/1255638639268311049
[ ] You'll note from the public share links like this one that Notion appears to be built entirely on AWS.
[ ] Try importing from as many other services as possible: WorkFlowy!
[ ] Notion produces a podcast on Anchor called Tools & Craft.
[ ] I suspect I'm going to adore page version history once I can figure out how to remember it's there.
[ ] In-browser experience vs. the downloadable "standalone" app. (I suspect it is actually a "web app," but I haven't had time to really learn what that means.

Notion's Web Clipper

[ ] The web clipper browser extension appears to be the best I have ever come across... That is, it is the best at determining which content to capture and capturing it very cleanly.
[ ] Able to clip past paywalls! The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times' respective paywalls are notably included!
[ ] ~~The Notion Web Clipper browser extension just does... this.~~

Reading List

[ ] Printing is only available on the web experience.
[ ] I was able to glitch Notion a few times (with this page, anyway,) but it's far from a common occurrence.
[ ] Notion's list of client use cases is extremely impressive, yes, especially considering how long they've actually been doing this, but one of my major arguments to make, here, is that we (the clients) have to continue to take a greater interest in meta shit about the company who makes and watches over this thing, because I can guarantee that both companies and individuals are steadily investing more and more risk into this one product every single day they continue to use it. (It is most definitely the sort of software you are only using because you specifically want to*,* even in a workplace setting. And therefore, everybody who is continuing to use Notion now will continue to do so and become more dependent on it. It's a bit preemptive of me to presume to know so much about it, but I would argue pretty strongly at this moment that there is no such thing as "casual" Notion use. You invest in this kind of thing because you're looking for an infinitely-expandable potential.
[ ] Notion supports Bandcamp embeds! 💖 (A Sound Card's Death, Captured)

Warning

[ ] I immediately imported the entirety of my Evernote archive and Bear archives, which was a bad idea, considering there is no way to exclude certain pages from search!

MacOS

Image arrangement went a lot smoother in the native MacOS application than it did in Windows, but it's worth noting the quite-wide performance chasm between my Surface Laptop 2 and my mother's MacBook Pro.
The native apps do not really function when offline, which is absolutely fine, especially when the sync system (however it works) is so much (thankfully) different from Evernote’s.

iOS

The iOS app is a little clunky, but not as much as one might expect, given the speed of the desktop app.
‣ is a paid app that was created to further streamline the mobile Notion experience.

Community

The r/Notion subreddit seems to be full of endless configuration porn.
The Notion Community Discord server
The NotionHacks Slack channel.
#NotionTwt
From what I've seen in all these communities, I'm worried that folks may end up spending more time fiddling, trying to create The Perfect Workspace than actually using their workspaces.
One component of the Notion Porn obsession which I will outright condemn: the relentless obsession with stylistically unifying what should specifically be left to go super nuts. Including complete icon sets with your premium, paid-for Notion themes? Too tempting! Too on-brand!
Parallels with Spreadsheet Cowboys.
The Notion Zine??

Academic Applications

‣

How I use Notion! as a student | studycollab: Alicia

Stuff I Would Change

More typographic options
More general theme/formatting options (like adding a theme which displays menus as a bordered table, perhaps.)
More keyboard shortcuts!
Adding spellcheck (after using Notion for a while, I am actually somewhat distressed at how many spelling mistakes I make without an automatic system to clean up after me.)
Moving stuff around can be a pain in the ass, but I certainly know no better than Notion's developers how to remedy this.
Migrating from AWS - I know it's almost certainly impossible, but Notion's dependence on Amazon Web Services could be a valid ethical obstacle for some users.
One of my only regular inconveniences while using Notion so far: when you direct the browser extension to clip a webpage to a specific Notion Page, the result always ends up at the bottom of the said Notion Page. This may be for the best - in fact, I cannot think of another specific configuration which would actually improve anything without drastically overcomplicating the lot, but it is distinctly an aspect of my workflow that I have had to change in order to fit Notion.
I have already often found myself wishing that any header/text element could be turned into a toggle "list." WorkFlowy really had somethin goin on, there, I'd say. Exploring a hypothetical Notion without any of these other file management tools, collapsible file trees would/does still do the job.

Evernote

https://youtu.be/6GoHFrYqEzI

In the above video, Evernote CEO Ian Small does describe the recent development as a "top-to-bottom rebuild:"

"When we set out to do this sortof top-to-bottom rebuild of the Evernote service - what I talked about at the beginning of last year - we knew it was a massive undertaking."

Memex Go

Evernote - Ministry Geek

Notion’s powerful note-taking app is now free for students and teachers - The Verge