Products · Product
Notion
Raised as a usability problem by 257 people on Hacker News over 9 years (2018–2026), in 133 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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- 5Search is slow to return resultsUnreviewed
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- 9Search only finds pages by exact titleUnreviewed
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- 2Search is slow to return resultsUnreviewed
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- 13Search only finds pages by exact titleUnreviewed
Every issue, all time, most people first
Pages load slowly, with noticeable delay on every actionUnreviewed
20182026- Page takes about 10 seconds to load and lags terribly, making it unusable2025-08-04
- Database pages with a couple entries take minutes to load2025-04-17
- App feels slow, with spinners appearing during interactions2025-04-15
Search is slow to return resultsUnreviewed
20182026- Search gets less useful as workspace grows, forcing effortful workarounds to find content2022-11-16
- Search becomes unusable with more than a couple hundred pages2022-11-16
- Search takes several seconds to show results after typing2022-02-19
Mobile app takes about 30 seconds to openUnreviewed
20182026- Continuously added notes on one page became very difficult to search, even with AI2024-07-16
- Search and page loading are slow, so finding a note takes waiting and luck2023-04-04
- Pages with many notes load very slowly, crawling especially with multiple people editing2022-11-16
Typing lags, scrolling stutters, and pasting takes secondsUnreviewed
20182026- Web editor lags badly, with about a 2 second delay when typing2024-09-29
- Typing lags so badly the app is unusable on a high-end laptop2023-04-26
- Text editing feels laggy and unresponsive, making it irritating to use2023-04-25
Markdown exports re-import differently because formats are incompatibleUnreviewed
20182026- Editor feels horrible to write in; markdown import broken and exporting is hard2025-03-16
- Markdown export and reimport loses half the formatting, even basic markdown2024-09-29
- Exported markdown re-imported produces a different result, since the formats are incompatible2024-07-15
Editing and formatting database tables is hardUnreviewed
20182026- Editing a table is a convoluted, messy experience2024-09-29
- Editing and formatting database tables remains the hardest part to deal with2023-04-25
- Fights the user's text editing; tables are messy and search is unreliable2022-06-10
Selecting text often selects the whole block insteadUnreviewed
20182026- Dragging to select moves blocks; clicking to navigate starts unwanted selections2024-09-29
- Selecting text sometimes selects the containing block instead, so it's hard to select text2023-04-25
- Copy-paste and drag-and-drop fail to select or place content as intended2023-04-25
Editing text fights block structure; links interrupt quick writingUnreviewed
20182026- Editing text fights the block structure; links and meta controls interrupt quick writing2023-06-28
- Must travel to the top of a large block to click into edit mode2023-06-28
- Copy and paste land in wrong spots, and slash menu and block structure keep interrupting writing2021-07-02
Page scrolls back to top after fully loadingUnreviewed
20182026- Page scrolls back to the top after fully loading2025-08-04
- Full-width database scrollbar looks like a page break and disrupts reading flow2021-05-13
- Hijacks page scrolling so the user can't read at a normal pace2020-11-11
Accidental taps instead of scrolls cause unwanted edits on mobileUnreviewed
20182026- Accidental taps instead of scrolls cause unwanted edits on mobile2023-08-27
- Tapping the to-do checkbox on mobile often opens edit mode instead of checking the item2022-11-16
- Scrolling a document on mobile often starts editing the page instead2020-12-23
Shortcuts and syntax differ from other apps, complicating text editingUnreviewed
20182026- Keybindings are slightly non-intuitive, so editing gets frustrating2023-09-07
- Long-form editing is clunky: links, text selection, shortcuts and joining paragraphs are wonky2022-02-19
- Shortcuts and syntax differ from other apps, so editing text is frustrating2018-09-05
Search only finds pages by exact titleUnreviewed
20182026- Search never finds what the user wants2023-04-26
- Search only works if you already know the exact page title2023-02-18
- Searching for a word that appears in a page doesn't find that page2022-11-22
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Notion drops keystrokes so fast typing cannot be entered2026-07-20
- Hides even simple, bare-minimum functions so they are hard to find2026-06-07
- Hidden text under collapsed lines is easy to miss because the expand control isn't visible2026-04-25
- Hard to find content; filters feel clunky; UI feels buggy and slow2026-04-23
- Rich text field is capped at 100 child blocks, with each formatting change consuming one, unlike the web UI2026-04-20
- Day-to-day use turns into maintaining the tool's own system-building2026-03-27
- Slow to load and slow to update, feels like molasses2026-01-21
- Only English (US) locale, so dates shown M/D/Y with no way to change2025-10-12
- Slow, bloated, and a poor overall user interface experience2025-09-23
- Developer can't figure out how to do basic tasks like adding dates or wrapping code blocks2025-09-18
- Navigation and UI feel clunky, so the layout is more opinionated2025-09-15
- Cluttered workspace with clunky navigation, and editing lags noticeably on Linux2025-09-11
- Seeing raw format codes mixed into editing view is poor UX2025-08-20
- Pages get buried in hard-to-find hierarchies, and search is poor2025-08-20
- App is sluggish and takes 10+ seconds to open2025-08-19
- Redirects to a no-JavaScript message on another domain, blocking article reading and whitelisting2025-08-17
- Page scrolls back to the top after fully loading2025-08-04
- Page takes about 10 seconds to load and lags terribly, making it unusable2025-08-04
- App is very slow and laggy to use compared to earlier versions2025-07-17
- Update popup interrupts users seconds after launch, reappears every start after 'Remind me later'2025-07-17
- Popup appears during meetings, and turning it off requires digging through settings2025-07-17
- Gets chaotic fast when scaling teams2025-07-13
- Controls are hidden behind invisible hover targets, making them hard to find2025-07-06
- Pasting a link captures keyboard focus in the bookmark, forcing a mouse click to continue typing2025-05-24
- Database pages with a couple entries take minutes to load2025-04-17
- Takes a minute or two just to navigate to a page2025-04-16
- Slow and clunky when handling large amounts of data2025-04-15
- App feels slow, with spinners appearing during interactions2025-04-15
- Commenter finds Notion's user experience so poor they dread a mail client built the same way2025-04-15
- Mobile app has bad UX and the product feels slow2025-04-15
- App is so slow it becomes unusable, consuming all resources on the Mac2025-04-15
- Editor feels horrible to write in; markdown import broken and exporting is hard2025-03-16
- Takes about 10 seconds to load each time it is opened2025-03-13
- Finds Notion counterintuitive to the point of being unusable for them2025-02-21
- Text selection is tedious in the Notion mobile app2024-11-14
- Logs user out mid-session, forcing re-login during active work and meetings2024-10-10
- Web editor lags badly, with about a 2 second delay when typing2024-09-29
- Dragging to select moves blocks; clicking to navigate starts unwanted selections2024-09-29
- Editing a table is a convoluted, messy experience2024-09-29
- Markdown export and reimport loses half the formatting, even basic markdown2024-09-29
- Unwanted AI prompt keeps popping up while trying to write, blocking typing2024-09-29
- New tag doesn't appear for the other person until they manually initiate it2024-09-29
- Can't properly select text with the keyboard, forcing mouse use2024-09-29
- Takes about 30 seconds to boot or load on mobile, too slow for quick use2024-08-27
- Using databases is frustrating: no keyboard shortcuts, Excel-style actions don't work2024-08-27
- Two people editing notes together in Notion is almost unusable2024-08-27
- Editor gets confused whether cursor is inside monospace span, so text gets wrongly formatted2024-08-15
- Scrolling tables hangs for seconds, and scroll position resets after editing a row2024-07-17
- Takes about 15 seconds to load an empty page, then several more seconds to dismiss popups2024-07-17
- Horizontal scrolling shows a cursor, kanban boards are hard to set up, and UI is slow2024-07-17