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I've been using Notion at my new workplace and was excited at first, but having used it now for many months I came to hate it. They constantly announce new feat

I've been using Notion at my new workplace and was excited at first, but having used it now for many months I came to hate it. They constantly announce new features but are completely neglecting the basics: - Copy and paste is completely broken. Good luck trying to paste a table. - The drag & drop feature is equally annoying, it just never works and doesn't select the things you intend to select or drop them in the place where you want them to be. - The basic table is very limited (e.g. no pictures/formatting inside cells, no ability to reorder/sort - vs a Google Docs/Sheets based table) - It grinds to a halt in long docs and databases over 100 rows. Can't stress this enough. - Timezone support is completely messed up (you can e.g. create a database with a time column and specify the timezone, but the calendar view will always map all events in the timezone you're in, making it useless because events are getting shifted to other days)

pyxelr 3y ago
For me, the key factor for switching from Notion to Obsidian, was its slowness with pages containing a lot of code blocks (e.g. Python). Some pages were even completely crashing the Notion mobile app.
corndoge 3y ago
I use, love and evangelize Notion but yes, all of these are valid criticism, and copy-pasting in particular is so busted.
softsound 3y ago
I remember the days before tables, and I think it's come a long way with lots of great features... That said, I don't see it as a replacement for regular tools like Google sheets and docs etc.
renjimen 3y ago
Even trying to select text is a nightmare. Notion can’t make up its mind between selecting text or selecting the objects that contains the text. I wish there was a markdown mode with a live preview, then I would never use the rest of the Notion interface.
bradgessler 3y ago
Their native app wrappers also have issues. - On macOS the "Sync dark/light mode with OS" settings constantly get reset - I'm frequently logged out (and have to log back in) - No effort for basic integration has happened, which makes drag & drop in and out of the app awkward, no sharing extensions, etc. If I'm being honest, I envy them for being in the position of being able to completely ignore this stuff and still have a product that people love. That said, it feels like an easy thing to throw 1-2 people on with the task of, "make this integrate deeper into the host operating system with Electron basics"
Slow_Hand 3y ago
For me the thing that made me give up using Notion was the “feel” of the basic text editing. There was a latency and lagginess to the way it responded that made it so unsatisfying and, at worst, irritating to use that I couldn’t go on. Typing this, it feels weird to give up because of such a subtle thing, but there were probably a dozen more details lacking in this way that eroded all of the goodwill won by the flashy features. In something as seemingly simple as a text editor it turns out that if it’s not built on a solid foundation of usability then I very quickly sour on the rest of it. Currently using Obsidian and am very pleased. I’m happy with how “light” it feels.
- Thorentis 3y ago
  As much as Atlassian stuff is hated on, Confluence Cloud editing feels butter smooth and very simple. The slash commands are a nice addition and it's improved quite a lot since the early days of confluence.
  - ohgodplsno 3y ago
    Now Atlassian only needs to fix the absolutely awful search bar that never finds what you want and the dreadful performance that makes even a developer's machine lag when navigating.
- camgunz 3y ago
  Yeah I felt this too. IME non-engineers love Notion, but engineers hate it because it's a pretty bad version of the system they're probably already using to organize themselves. Maybe this is too dismissive but I can't help but feel like it's just the latest "find a UNIX service/app (Vim/Emacs), make a worse SaaS version, $$$".
atleastoptimal 3y ago
Notion is a greatest common denominator of the general form on how to make a successful company out of nothing really new or groundbreaking. It's no better than the alternatives, but invites a sort of appetite for using it that keeps it afloat and to any company mired in the complexity of their enterprise productivity solutions, offers a simple, one-stop-shop to everything, even if its promises are vacuous. > Create an "ecosystem" generic enough to potentially offer unlimited tacked on features and unlimited scope creep > Make it very minimalist and user friendly so there's no adoption cost > Create the impression that there's some ideal harmony of workflow available to any user who uses it the "right way". Apple heavily leans into this in their marketing. If it doesn't work for you then you must not be using it right
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  What it gives is a step up from spreadsheets for managing everything from projects to customers. You can build a trivial CRM with a few tables. Earlier today I thought, I need a quickie CRM. Each customer has contacts, Each customer has logged events (phone calls). I could build a CRUD app to do this. I built it in notion in about 10 minutes. And the thing is - a company like mine already has things like internal portals to do all sorts of stuff. Instead of a business admin asking the developers for a new field on X, he can just go build it out - but it has two killer features to excel/docs 1. Global search. I cant stand having a million different excel sheets where nothing is linked. Even if notion search can be slow - typing in something and getting an answer is a breath of relief 2. Has way better structured data, templates and plugins out of the box ( I can just do remote data to jira, bitbucket, etc).
  - skinnymuch 3y ago
    Are you making a page per customer or the database feature? Would Airtable work better for this? I use Airtable for stuff like this personally. I use Notion for some simple work stuff too like as a CMS
makeitdouble 3y ago
As softsound says, even with its limits, just having basic tables now feels like such a win. It took so long. I think they always kinda hated tables, and simple or databases ones, editing and formatting wise it's still the worse part to deal with in Notion. At the same time the whole product got so much slower. I regularly see the "click here to see latest version" head banner as my browser local version falls out of sync, when online collaboration and quasi-realtime sync was the whole point of Notion. Adding to timezones: the new date shortcuts (@today etc.) are so close, yet so frustrating to deal with on auto-generated pages on regular schedules. Say you schedule a report page to be created on friday morning so you get to fill it for the monday meeting, good luck with dynamically setting the dates.
paulddraper 3y ago
I love Notion. There I said it. Their features suit my needs in a clean and satisfying way. Props to the team.
simonebrunozzi 3y ago
100% this. I am starting to hate Notion, and I hate myself for the fact that I trusted this company to "do well" to its users. They're not.

pyxelr 3y ago

For me, the key factor for switching from Notion to Obsidian, was its slowness with pages containing a lot of code blocks (e.g. Python). Some pages were even completely crashing the Notion mobile app.

corndoge 3y ago

I use, love and evangelize Notion but yes, all of these are valid criticism, and copy-pasting in particular is so busted.

softsound 3y ago

I remember the days before tables, and I think it's come a long way with lots of great features... That said, I don't see it as a replacement for regular tools like Google sheets and docs etc.

renjimen 3y ago

Even trying to select text is a nightmare. Notion can’t make up its mind between selecting text or selecting the objects that contains the text. I wish there was a markdown mode with a live preview, then I would never use the rest of the Notion interface.

bradgessler 3y ago

Their native app wrappers also have issues. - On macOS the "Sync dark/light mode with OS" settings constantly get reset - I'm frequently logged out (and have to log back in) - No effort for basic integration has happened, which makes drag & drop in and out of the app awkward, no sharing extensions, etc. If I'm being honest, I envy them for being in the position of being able to completely ignore this stuff and still have a product that people love. That said, it feels like an easy thing to throw 1-2 people on with the task of, "make this integrate deeper into the host operating system with Electron basics"

Slow_Hand 3y ago

For me the thing that made me give up using Notion was the “feel” of the basic text editing. There was a latency and lagginess to the way it responded that made it so unsatisfying and, at worst, irritating to use that I couldn’t go on. Typing this, it feels weird to give up because of such a subtle thing, but there were probably a dozen more details lacking in this way that eroded all of the goodwill won by the flashy features. In something as seemingly simple as a text editor it turns out that if it’s not built on a solid foundation of usability then I very quickly sour on the rest of it. Currently using Obsidian and am very pleased. I’m happy with how “light” it feels.

Thorentis 3y ago
As much as Atlassian stuff is hated on, Confluence Cloud editing feels butter smooth and very simple. The slash commands are a nice addition and it's improved quite a lot since the early days of confluence.
- ohgodplsno 3y ago
  Now Atlassian only needs to fix the absolutely awful search bar that never finds what you want and the dreadful performance that makes even a developer's machine lag when navigating.
camgunz 3y ago
Yeah I felt this too. IME non-engineers love Notion, but engineers hate it because it's a pretty bad version of the system they're probably already using to organize themselves. Maybe this is too dismissive but I can't help but feel like it's just the latest "find a UNIX service/app (Vim/Emacs), make a worse SaaS version, $$$".

atleastoptimal 3y ago

Notion is a greatest common denominator of the general form on how to make a successful company out of nothing really new or groundbreaking. It's no better than the alternatives, but invites a sort of appetite for using it that keeps it afloat and to any company mired in the complexity of their enterprise productivity solutions, offers a simple, one-stop-shop to everything, even if its promises are vacuous. > Create an "ecosystem" generic enough to potentially offer unlimited tacked on features and unlimited scope creep > Make it very minimalist and user friendly so there's no adoption cost > Create the impression that there's some ideal harmony of workflow available to any user who uses it the "right way". Apple heavily leans into this in their marketing. If it doesn't work for you then you must not be using it right

calvinmorrison 3y ago
What it gives is a step up from spreadsheets for managing everything from projects to customers. You can build a trivial CRM with a few tables. Earlier today I thought, I need a quickie CRM. Each customer has contacts, Each customer has logged events (phone calls). I could build a CRUD app to do this. I built it in notion in about 10 minutes. And the thing is - a company like mine already has things like internal portals to do all sorts of stuff. Instead of a business admin asking the developers for a new field on X, he can just go build it out - but it has two killer features to excel/docs 1. Global search. I cant stand having a million different excel sheets where nothing is linked. Even if notion search can be slow - typing in something and getting an answer is a breath of relief 2. Has way better structured data, templates and plugins out of the box ( I can just do remote data to jira, bitbucket, etc).
- skinnymuch 3y ago
  Are you making a page per customer or the database feature? Would Airtable work better for this? I use Airtable for stuff like this personally. I use Notion for some simple work stuff too like as a CMS

makeitdouble 3y ago

As softsound says, even with its limits, just having basic tables now feels like such a win. It took so long. I think they always kinda hated tables, and simple or databases ones, editing and formatting wise it's still the worse part to deal with in Notion. At the same time the whole product got so much slower. I regularly see the "click here to see latest version" head banner as my browser local version falls out of sync, when online collaboration and quasi-realtime sync was the whole point of Notion. Adding to timezones: the new date shortcuts (@today etc.) are so close, yet so frustrating to deal with on auto-generated pages on regular schedules. Say you schedule a report page to be created on friday morning so you get to fill it for the monday meeting, good luck with dynamically setting the dates.

paulddraper 3y ago

I love Notion. There I said it. Their features suit my needs in a clean and satisfying way. Props to the team.

simonebrunozzi 3y ago

100% this. I am starting to hate Notion, and I hate myself for the fact that I trusted this company to "do well" to its users. They're not.