this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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104
Notion Desktop is monitoring your audio and network (news.ycombinator.com)
submitted 4 days ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 21 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's worth reading the ycombinator comments on this one.

[–] TurboLag@lemmings.world 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In particular, Notion employees are saying that they are not listening to audio from your microphone, but just checking whether other processes in the system are using the microphone. There is a setting to disable this entirely.

Copy-pasting from the thread:

  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.

I'm using the latest version of the app and I don't see this setting. I've also never seen these meeting notifications. It's possible that you only get them if you have AI features enabled in your workspace, which I don't. (I read a while ago that you can email support to ask them to disable it. I wrote a short email, and they replied within a day that it had been done, no questions or push-back.)

[–] scytale@piefed.zip 16 points 4 days ago

Our PMs don't like making things opt-in.

This reply from one of the employees sums it up.

[–] sunth1ef@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 days ago

This type of thing (+ the AI embedded shenanigans) is what sent me over to Obsidian for personal use.

Still use Notion a bit for work but I've peeled way back on it.