Tell HN: Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network
113 comments
·July 17, 2025wustep
Hey!
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
jitl
To elaborate:
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)
wferrell
It is not genuine to say that Notion cannot listen in. Notion can listen in. Anytime it wants. Yes on Macs an indicator will be displayed - but not always prominently depending on what other apps/devices are being used (for example using continuity camera)
Source: I built the same listening infrastructure into other meeting note taking apps. Our team spoke at length about this security issue with Apple.
chinathrow
Make it opt-in and this would be not an issue.
jitl
Our PMs don't like making things opt-in. I pitched a fit when we added global shortcuts to launch the Notion app search window, but I wasn't able to change any minds.
A feature that's opt-in will get like 1% of the use of a feature that's opt-out. A happier middle ground would be to enable by default and showed a "I don't like this, pls turn it off" button the first few times.
weego
If they made borderline "features" like this opt-in, no one would and then the people driving this won't get the career prospect boost of shipping a new feature.
combyn8tor
While you're here - can you tell your PM's that your auto update on windows is annoying. Every time I start the app there's a prompt asking me to either "Install and Relaunch" or "Remind me later" (which seems to just hassle me again on next app start). The worst part is the pop-up doesn't show until 5-10 seconds after I start the app. So I'll start the app, start clicking around and then I'm interrupted by this pop-up. This seems to happen every day because you push a lot of updates.
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.
dakiol
Thanks for the explanation. I was about to install Notion Desktop today. I Won’t install it.
XCabbage
Why? I don't understand the objection to this. If the app was sending off any data to Notion without consent, that would obviously be a privacy issue, but why is it a problem for a desktop app to simply check if your mic is being used and offer to record?
colechristensen
Yeah, no. You don't get to monitor my anything in order to provide features. I was never a user of notion and I definitely won't be. It is just an oversight of the OS that your process is allowed to see the list of other processes.
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.
chinathrow
From 1)
> 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.
rchaud
AI features + user opt-in are mutually exclusive at this point.
dml2135
Why didn't Notion ask for my affirmative consent before monitoring my network traffic?
Are there other cases where Notion is monitoring my network traffic? If so, what are they?
wustep
FWIW, you can verify when any apps are recording microphone input by the OS's microphone indicator. I think Windows, Mac, and Linux all have one.
(edit: see what @jitl said)
chaps
Does any of that microphone detection stuff send anything over the network to Notion to indicate that the check was done, plus the check's results?
jitl
let me look
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.
chaps
Thanks for the answer.
Just want to clarify for pedantic reasons - is there transmission regardless of whether it's enabled or disabled? And does that happen only if someone asks Notion to record?
CubsFan1060
If it helps, this has been one of the most infuriating things for me in recent memory. I don't understand why this wasn't opt-in.
wustep
thanks, will fwd to team
you're talking about the desktop notification in particular, right?
CubsFan1060
Yeah. I mean, the rest is concerning. But one day it just started popping up every time I went into a meeting. Which, of course, was exactly the time that I was busy in a meeting, and didn't have time to dig through settings to figure out how to turn it off.
incoming1211
* team receives feedback
"Bin it, no one will turn it on, make them turn it off if they don't want it"
DrillShopper
Can you give me a source beyond "just trust me, bro"?
wustep
your OS shows a microphone icon when apps are recording audio — when you use the app, you should see that when recording is on during the meeting transcription and off otherwise
_kush
They only check if your mic is on, not what you're saying (they can't hear you unless you've granted mic permission). They also look at your network traffic to see if audio is being sent (otherwise you can get a lot of false positives). Using mic + network data is a common way to spot meetings -- my app LookAway[0] does something similar to pause reminders during calls.
[0]: https://lookaway.app
AlexandrB
I thought you had to give explicit permission for an app to monitor network traffic in macOS? I'm assuming your app asks for this, but it sounds like Notion does not if the GP was surprised by the monitoring.
tbeseda
My Notion install (macOS) asked to discover devices on my network. I'm assuming this permission is related to "monitoring network traffic".
_kush
No, that’s the new "Local Network" prompt which started appearing since macOS 15. Any app that opens a multicast/broadcast socket (mDNS, SSDP, WebRTC ICE, etc.) now has to ask. Electron apps (including Notion) do this by default, so you see this dialog.
simple10
That's interesting. Although I wasn't able to find any confirming info that allowing the "locate local devices" permissions allows for network monitoring. It seems to only allow Bonjour and multicast DNS. Anyone know for sure what it allows?
odo1242
Yes, it would be that one
_kush
You don't need to give any explicit permissions for the snapshot of current sockets.
jjcob
Yeah, non-sandboxed apps can iterate over open file descriptors. It's quite useful to detect eg. which app on your local machine is connecting over TCP. I hope they don't lock it down. It doesn't allow intercepting traffic, but you can see what connects where.
untech
I’ve come to hate Notion with passion because of its abysmal performance, but I still pay for it for my small business. My non-technical employees use it as a database for clients, tasks, payments etc. I tried to research replacements several times, and still haven’t found anything good. Sometimes I wonder if I should build my own.
tummler
Anytype (https://anytype.io), Appflowy (https://appflowy.com)
__jonas
Do you use Anytype productively?
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.
bGl2YW5j
These concepts have been copied directly from Notion.
I’ve found Anytype to be more streamlined. I’m highly familiar with Notion though, so adapted easily.
armedgorilla
I'm in the same boat. Since they decided to bundle in their AI features with their core product (at only a 30% price increase!), I've been looking for an exist route. But finding a single collaborative text editor + database designer replacement has been difficult.
bschne
Most intriguing thing in that vein I've seen: https://thymer.com (haven't used it, am not affiliated, just looked promising in a demo video esp. on performance grounds)
jdvh
Hey thanks for mentioning us!
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.
xamde
Looks like org mode for the masses
tekawade
There are many suggestions already let me through in one more: Affine : https://affine.pro/
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.
baxtr
I really like Notion’s information architecture (in particular the top index pages) and its multi-user capability.
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.
dtkav
If you like Obsidian and want it to be multiplayer you might be interested in Relay [0] (shameless plug).
There are also plugins like make.md [1] that are focused more on making the UX feel more like notion.
[0] https://relay.md
seanw444
NocoDB perhaps? It's not a document-focused system, but you said they use it more as a database.
major505
I used a lot for organizing my personal projects, endup changing to Microsoft Loop for client stuff. And Obsidian for personal stuff.
dml2135
The performance really is abysmal. I started using it years ago and the change from the early days has been drastic.
toddmorey
I have a funny story: I went to go to a notion doc and just intuitively pressed command-O in the app to open the notion doc I wanted. Of course that command doesn’t open notion docs—what that does is turn on audio transcription.
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.
TYPE_FASTER
Did it transcribe the dog? How long until we get a LLM that can translate dog barks...
callalex
People are doing some interesting work in an attempt to categorize whale and dolphin communication https://blog.padi.com/talk-to-whales-with-ai/
Pi9h
If anyone is looking for an alternative to Notion without the bloat, I’m building https://docmost.com.
It has a nice UI, real-time collaboration, diagrams support and more.
You can self-host it too.
xelia
I self host docmost and love it, thank you for making it!
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.
Pi9h
The next sharing goal would be to make it possible to share an entire "Space", but not the "Workspace" itself.
Would that fit the ideas you have in mind?
savolai
I’m wondering if integrating this with nocodb mentioned above would work, as i also use databases in documents.
Pi9h
You could use the Iframe embed feature to embed your NocoDB databases.
barbazoo
I love so much how nice this looks. But I wish this was Obsidian or rather, a standalone app. I don't want a web app for notes. Notes are all files. Different use case I know but I wish so much Obsidian looked and felt more like your app/Notion.
barbazoo
Looking more into this, 4o actually produced a list of plugins that add functionality to do some of the things Notion excels at so that tells me that there probably is a way to get datatables etc.
moomoo11
Very cool.
I wish tools like this could be embeddable. For example, being able to add it into existing apps.
always_imposter
[dead]
pat64
As someone who has built an app that detects calls and meetings, this isn’t as nefarious as you’re making it out to be.
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.
shreddit
It’s not necessarily about what they doing, more like how they do things. They could at least tell me about it, like: Hey, we check whether you joined a meeting to provide you with our note taking assistant. Are you okay with that?
Don’t assume consent.
rob74
Well, to give them the benefit of doubt, this monitoring could be done in a (more or less) privacy sensitive way, e.g. by analyzing the frequency spectrum of the audio input without actually recording or transmitting it, or as others have suggested, maybe they're just checking if the microphone is in use. And for the network they're apparently only monitoring the ports, not the actual data. But still, it sounds like a feature for which they should provide an option to turn it off - or, even better, make it opt-in.
like_any_other
While both have privacy implications, I'd rather we distinguish 'monitoring' that exfiltrates your data to their servers, and offline-only 'monitoring', used only for legitimate, benign purposes of the program itself.
e9a8a0b3aded
Are you saying that Notion desktop has access to microphone audio or it is only able to determine if the microphone is in use?
The former is actually concerning to me. I can't imagine caring if it only knows my microphone is in use.
_kush
It's the latter. An app can't access the audio without explicit microphone monitoring permissions.
jherdman
If you go to "Settings > Notifications > Desktop meeting detections notifications" you can turn this feature off. I haven't verified if the mic and traffic sniffing is correspondingly turned off though.
nihalbaig
that's really corcerning for user privacy!!
nashashmi
What is notion?
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.
If you have the Notion Desktop App installed, you may have started to notice a "In a meeting? Start AI Meeting Notes" notification pop up exactly when you are joining a virtual meeting (e.g. joining a Google Meet on Firefox).
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...