At first, I assumed it must have been using my Google Workspace account to snoop on my calendar. But then I started to notice it would notify exactly when I joined even if I was late and the meeting had previously started.
This was the response from Notion Support after they worked with the Notion Engineering team.
> Meeting Detection Architecture:
> - The system uses a sophisticated dual-detection approach: microphone monitoring combined with network port analysis
> - Detection is implemented separately for macOS and Windows at the native operating system level
I've uninstalled the Notion Desktop App...
1. Notion records audio only during your use of the Meeting Notes feature. Here are the docs: https://www.notion.com/help/ai-meeting-notes
2. Notion desktop app has notifications about meetings that ask you if you want to use Meeting Notes, it recognizes this by detecting that your microphone is on (i.e. it does not listen to audio coming from your microphone). This feature is a setting in preferences btw, under Notifications > Desktop meeting detection notification.
source: I work for Notion
The Notion desktop app will observe if there is a process running on your computer that is actively using your microphone, such as Zoom.
Notion does not and cannot listen to the audio coming from your microphone ambiently or snoop on the signal received by another application. This detection is done purely based on the existing of a process using your microphone, not on the audio coming from the microphone. Users can verify this because the OS-level microphone indicator will show that Notion is not listening to their microphone.
If one is detected, Notion will notify the user and try to associate it with a calendar event if you have connected your calendar. Connecting your calendar is not a requirement to receive this notification.
Users can disable this behavior via their account settings in Settings > Notifications > Desktop meeting detection notifications.
Only when the user has started a meeting note and clicked record, will Notion activate the user's microphone. We cannot do this without operating system mediated consent dialog, which is the way it should be! At this point Notion will show up as using the microphone in the OS indicators.
(I work at Notion)
Source: I built the same listening infrastructure into other meeting note taking apps. Our team spoke at length about this security issue with Apple.
I do not want to be spied on and have 0 trust for any company wishing to do any kind of monitoring of my usage in order to provide or advertise "features" to me.
I'd prefer an option to silently grab non-security/non-fix updates once every [Day, Week, Month] in the background, and install automatically on next app start up. Urgent updates can happen immediately. The default should be every week as every update is around 85mb. You could go a step further and have an option to only download over WiFi.
As for the mic "issue", I'm not sure what everyone's on about. Acting like it's the first app on Windows to monitor what the system is doing to provide a feature.
> If you do not want the AI Meeting Notes feature available to your users, administrators may opt-out their workspace at any time via the toggle available in their console.
Here's your problem: Make this opt-in.
Are there other cases where Notion is monitoring my network traffic? If so, what are they?
See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1i4ypl8/comment/m8o... for info about the "local network access" permission
(edit: see what @jitl said)
Like, I can give my consent, but the meeting attendees can't, right?
Does Notion just listen to me, not my attendees?
I only ask because we got an email about recording meetings from HR/Legal a couple weeks ago and I never considered it before
EDIT: no, there's no transmission of logs or analytics events besides a check to see if the feature is enabled. We only transmit some data if you ask Notion to record.
you're talking about the desktop notification in particular, right?
[0]: https://lookaway.app
I have it installed but I find it kind of daunting compared to Notion for organizing my notes, it seems to want to be a more abstract kind of 'knowledge management system'.
I just opened it again and it popped up a 'What's New' with phrases like 'Relations are now properties' and something about 'types', 'templates', 'sets' and 'queries', I really just want to take notes and organize them in a straightforward hierarchy.
With Thymer we really care about performance, but Thymer is also end-to-end encrypted because we don't want to compromise on privacy. And it's real-time collaborative and offline first.
Thymer has optional self-hosting. Then you can upgrade (or not) at your own leisure, or intentionally stick to an older version you like better. Enshittification is a big problem in our industry. We've all been burned by it -- we certainly have -- and being able to opt out of a "new and improved!" version is a real feature.
Thymer will also be very extensible. Today we launched our plugin SDK: https://thymer.com/plugins and https://github.com/thymerapp/thymer-plugin-sdk/ with a bunch of examples. With Thymer you will be able to "vibe code" the very simple plugins and with VSCode/Cursor you can make more complex plugins with hot-reload.
I tried some other tools like Confluence and Obsidian but like you say, there seems to be no match from a UX perspective.
Do I love Notion? Definitely not. Would I change to another tool with the same feature set? Instantly.
There are also plugins like make.md [1] that are focused more on making the UX feel more like notion.
[0] https://relay.md
Please consider improving one of the existing open source solutions before doing this: XWiki, Nextcloud, wiki.js...
There's advanced stuff that already exists and we could use some cooperation to get better instead of another competitor in a crowded space.
(I work for XWiki SAS - you can also pay them to build what's missing for you)
You can self host too if you like. Not all features as Notion but comes very close. Seems more private too compared to Notion.
I am also looking for more private and secure Notion alternatives. My company doesn’t allow using Notion.
I like templates, tasks, scrum etc. which I use for personal use. But I am reluctant on saving any personal information in it.
It has a nice UI, real-time collaboration, diagrams support and more.
You can self-host it too.
Will you consider making it publishable as a wiki? The current share feature is close but forces me to share a specific URL and live-edit public pages.
Would that fit the ideas you have in mind?
All this needs to work is the ability to mark blocks of the document as "public" so only that gets published properly. Any possibility of doing this currently or interest in supporting in the future?
I wish tools like this could be embeddable. For example, being able to add it into existing apps.
So two hours later, I realize I’ve transcribed at the bottom of our team overview page what read like the diary of a madman from fragments of conversation I was having with my wife and dog. I am glad I caught it and deleted it.
You can detect patterns of hardware use that suggest you’re in a meeting without actually eavesdropping on an actual audio stream of any kind.
Basically is some app using the mic hardware for something?? Likely a meeting so.
Don’t assume consent.
The former is actually concerning to me. I can't imagine caring if it only knows my microphone is in use.
I have been pulling my hair trying to learn these new no code db tools. And I think I have come to a simple explainer.
It is a list of documents built with (something called) block-editors. Each document can be given properties. The properties get listed into columns. The columns are fields. The documents are rows. And that makes a database table.
In reverse, it is a database table of records. One record can be can be configured with various fields, plus a document "canvas" made by a block-editor.
The block editors can import and display views (aka queries) of database tables. And that is what makes it a full circle spaghetti. A document (listed in a database) can display a database table.
I keep Notion Desktop open pretty much all the time on my work laptop, and have not seen these.
I’m happy to be wrong (well, in this case, I’d be upset at a big privacy violation)… but it seems pretty unlikely the audio monitoring is happening on macOS.
There is a rule in journalism to not burn one's sources, did you violate that rule in the OP? (I don't know, I am not a journalist.)
We could invite Notion management to comment on this thread.
Why should you entrust them with your private notes and data?
