Notion Calendar

Why I Downloaded Notion Calendar

I saw a post on Reddit about how someone was using this to plan their entire freelance week, and I figured, hey, it’s free. I’m always looking for ways to stop juggling three different apps just to know what I’m doing on a Tuesday afternoon. I downloaded it on my iPhone 14 because my normal calendar app just felt… dead. It didn’t connect to my tasks or notes, and I hate paying for something I haven’t tested to death first. I wanted to see if this was actually any different from the generic calendar that came with my phone, or if it was just a fancy skin.

Standout Features

Honestly, the biggest thing for me is how it links to my Notion databases. I have a habit of making pages for every little project—like “Fix the car insurance” or “Plan Sarah’s birthday party”—and then forgetting they exist. This calendar shows those pages as actual events on a timeline. That’s not something my standard Apple Calendar can do. I also liked that I could swipe between the weekly view and a monthly overview without the app freezing up, which happens more often than I’d like with other free tools. The ability to drag a task from one day to the next is super simple and saved me a lot of fuss. For someone like me who basically lives in a paranoid state about accidentally booking two things at once, the color coding for different Notion projects is a lifesaver.

Daily Use Experience

I use this app every single day now, usually right after my morning coffee catastrophe around 7:15 AM while my cat is yelling at me. Last Wednesday, I had a dentist appointment at 10 AM and a deadline for a blog draft at 3 PM. I opened the app, and both were right there—the dentist as a Google Calendar event synced in, the blog draft as a Notion database page with a date. It felt really cool to see them side by side without switching screens. One thing I found annoying at first, though, is that the sync isn’t instant. I had to manually refresh a few times before the dentist reminder popped up. But for free software, I can live with a five-second lag. The interface on my phone screen is clean—not too many buttons trying to sell me a premium upgrade—which I respect. I’m a simple guy; I just want to see my Wednesday, not a marketing pitch.

Cost Breakdown

Here’s the thing—it’s free. Zero dollars. No hidden trial that expires after 14 days. I checked every corner of the settings screen for an upsell, and there isn’t one. You just need a free Notion account, which I already had. There’s no premium tier specifically for the calendar that I could find. So, for someone like me who holds their wallet like a scared turtle, this is a win. I didn’t have to enter a credit card, I didn’t get hit with a “subscribe now” popup after three uses, and I’m not getting bombarded with ads. The only cost is the time you spend setting up your Notion databases to talk to the calendar, which takes maybe 20 minutes if you know your way around Notion.

Support Experience

I had a problem last week where my events from a specific Notion database just stopped showing up. I sent a message through the in-app contact form on a Thursday night. I didn’t get a response until Sunday afternoon, and it was kind of a generic copy-paste answer about “checking your database permissions.” I had already tried that. I wrote back asking for more specific help, and they took another three days to get back to me. That part was frustrating, especially because the app was basically broken for me for a whole day until I fixed it myself by disconnecting and reconnecting my Google Calendar. I get that it’s a free app, but a faster reply or a tiny bit of personal troubleshooting would have saved me a headache.

Privacy Verdict

I’m not the type to read every privacy policy word-for-word, but I did look into it because I’m paranoid about my schedule data being sold. Notion’s privacy policy for the calendar seems to fall in line with their regular app policies, meaning they don’t sell your personal data, but they do use some data for analytics to improve the service. I already trusted Notion with my notes and project pages, so adding my calendar events to that same ecosystem makes me slightly nervous, but not enough to delete it. I turned off “share analytics” in the settings the second I installed it, which is an option. For now, I’m comfortable using it, but I’m keeping my eye on it. If I see a random ad for a dentist the day after I book an appointment, I’m uninstalling immediately.