Notion Calendar Launch Guide: Full Feature Breakdown and Practical Tips

Notion recently released the brand-new Notion Calendar. This product inherits the features of the acquired Cron and further integrates with the Notion platform.

With Notion Calendar, users can view schedules from multiple databases in a single interface and even use templates from Notion databases. Although Notion Calendar still has some limitations and room for improvement — such as only supporting Google account login and the inability to directly edit Notion page properties — its elegant interface design and efficient user experience still provide users with a powerful new scheduling tool.

Hello everyone, this month's feature tracking update comes early due to the launch of Notion's latest product, Notion Calendar. So if there are no other major updates this month, the next feature tracking article will go live in late February.

Back in 2022, Notion acquired the calendar app Cron. Since then, I've been waiting to see how Notion would port Cron's many features into Notion's own Calendar view, which has quite a few shortcomings and limitations.

However, this month's update didn't bring that port. Instead, Notion directly renamed the acquired app Cron to Notion Calendar and further strengthened the connection between Notion and Notion Calendar. So in this article, I'll walk you through how to make Notion and Notion Calendar work better together.

Basic Introduction

• Supported platforms: Mac, Windows, iPhone — Android and iPad are not yet supported
• Notion Calendar download
  • Official download link: Click here
• Interface language: Chinese is not supported
• Price: Free, and Notion itself doesn't require a paid plan for integration

Currently, Notion Calendar only supports Google account login and does not yet support logging in directly with a Notion account. So if you don't have access to Google, you won't be able to log into Notion Calendar for now. However, word from the Notion community is that the Notion team is working on native Notion account login support.

Connecting Notion

After installing and logging into Notion Calendar with your Google account, you can click "Add Calendar account" in the bottom-left corner, then log into your Notion account under Integrations - Notion.

Once logged into your Notion account, click "Add Notion database" in the bottom-left corner to add databases that contain a Calendar view or Timeline view to Notion Calendar. After successfully adding them, your Notion databases will sync bidirectionally with Notion Calendar.

Please note: this means that if you've created a database with only a Table view, that database won't be discoverable by Notion Calendar.

You can also click the new "Open in Calendar" button directly in Notion, which will automatically add that Calendar view or Timeline view to Notion Calendar.

Basic Features

1. Entries added to a Notion calendar database will automatically sync to Notion Calendar

2. Schedules created in Notion Calendar will automatically sync back to the Notion database

3. You can open the corresponding Notion page directly from Notion Calendar

However, after clicking this button, you may find that it redirects to the web version of Notion. If you want Notion Calendar to automatically open pages in the Notion desktop app, you'll need to enable the "Open links in desktop app" option in the web version of Notion's settings.

Key Features

1. Notion Calendar Can Subscribe to Multiple Databases

In the past, one of the problems with Notion's Calendar view was that, due to its database-based nature, it could only display schedules from its own database and couldn't aggregate schedules from other databases. For example, if you had three databases for Work, Life, and Study, their schedule events would be scattered across each database's own Calendar view. The only workaround was to put them all in the same database and then use Select, Filter, and other features to sort and group them.

But now Notion Calendar supports subscribing to multiple Notion databases simultaneously and displaying all schedule events in a single interface.

2. Notion Calendar Can Subscribe to Different Views of the Same Database

You can create different Calendar views within the same database based on different filter criteria, and Notion Calendar can subscribe to all of these views simultaneously. For example, the database below has three different schedule types.

I also used the filter feature to create a separate Calendar view for each schedule type.

Then I can click the "Open in Calendar" button for each Calendar view one by one.

This syncs the schedules from all three views into Notion Calendar separately.

This also means you can use the Filter feature in your Notion database to hide completed schedules, and those hidden schedules will also disappear from Notion Calendar.

3. Create Schedules in Notion Calendar Using Notion Database Templates

In the "Meeting Notes" database below, I created a meeting notes template and set it as the default option when creating a new page.

Now when I create a schedule in Notion Calendar, the Notion database will automatically apply this template.

4. Maximum of 10 Notion Database Calendar Sources

You cannot add an unlimited number of Notion databases. The current limit is 10.

5. Google Calendar Events Can Link to Notion Pages

Google Calendar events created in Notion Calendar can link directly to specific Notion pages via the sidebar.

Tips and Tricks

1. Common Keyboard Shortcuts

Memorizing these common keyboard shortcuts can greatly improve your efficiency:

• M: Switch to month view
• W: Switch to week view
• D: Switch to day view
• T: Jump to today

You can also use the shortcut Ctrl+K to open a richer quick-action panel.

2. Custom Day Range

In the top-right tab, you can enter a custom day range for the calendar.

You can also use the number keys on your keyboard to quickly switch to a specific day range.

3. Horizontal Date Scrolling

Use Shift + Mouse Scroll to scroll the date range horizontally.

4. Time Scheduling

Press S to mark available time slots on your calendar.

Then click the Create button in the top-right corner to generate a booking link.

Send the generated link to others — when they click the link, they'll be able to see the available time slots you've set and book accordingly.

Issues and Complaints

Before Notion Calendar launched, Notion ran an intensive promotional campaign for over 2 weeks.

However, the high-profile marketing approach and extended promotion period significantly raised user expectations for this update. For many users, adding a standalone calendar app was unexpected — lighter users were hoping to see improvements to Notion itself. As a result, many minor issues became harder to accept:

1. Only Google account login is supported, yet Android is not supported
2. It requests excessive unnecessary permissions from Google Calendar, such as editing and deleting contacts
3. It can only sync Google Calendar events but not Google Calendar tasks
4. After subscribing to a database, Notion Calendar only shows the database name, not the view name
5. Notion database schedules must have a time set before they appear in Notion Calendar, so you can't quickly arrange unscheduled items by dragging them in Notion Calendar
6. Recurring events cannot be set up, such as filling out a weekly report every day at 6 PM or working out every Saturday
7. No direct bidirectional sync with Apple Calendar
8. You cannot view detailed Notion page information directly in Notion Calendar, nor can you edit page properties like checking a checkbox — you must navigate back to Notion
9. Sync speed is occasionally slow, requiring a manual refresh (Ctrl+R)

Conclusion

If you're a heavy Notion user who frequently uses calendar tools to manage your work and life, I'd recommend downloading and trying Notion Calendar. While there's still plenty of room for improvement, the features are already quite usable — at the very least, being able to subscribe to schedules from multiple databases at once is already solving a major pain point.

Notion Calendar also features an elegantly designed interface and smooth, efficient shortcut operations — something other calendar apps find hard to match.

But if you don't have the habit of using a calendar to manage schedules and tasks, and these kinds of tools just aren't for you, there's no need to force it. We still need to give Notion Calendar more time to optimize, so in the meantime, just make the best of the tools you already have.

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