Once you get a hang of Notion, you would want to access all other tools and screens right from your Notion dashboard. Centralizing your tools boosts productivity — It’s surprising how the tiny convenience of not having to switch screens can save so much time and avoid distraction.
This makes capability to embed widgets an indispensable feature for anyone managing projects in Notion. Be it a Google calendar, to keep an eye on your schedule or a Spotify playlist, to listen play music from your Notion page, embedding content in Notion will help you access other tools fast — it makes for those micro-optimizations that add up to make a big difference.
In this article, we will discuss how you can add widgets of choice to your Notion page. Here are four steps to that:
1. Choosing the Right Widget
Notion offers a variety of widgets that you can embed in your pages. You can choose your widgets based on your requirement. For example, if you want to access music from Notion, you can simply embed your Spotify playlists and songs. But if you want to track your meetings, you can add your Google calendar.
Similarly, if your purpose is just to make your page look aesthetic, you may want to embed Pinterest images.
Type of widgets that Notion supports
1. Calendar Widgets: These allow you to view and manage your schedule directly from your Notion page. Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and iCal are among the many options available.
2. Weather Widgets: These provide current weather information and forecasts for a specific location.
3. Note-Taking Widgets: These allow you to take quick notes on your Notion page. Examples include sticky note widgets and quick jot widgets.
4. Social Media Widgets: These display live updates from your social media accounts, including Twitter feeds, Instagram photos, or LinkedIn profiles.
5. Music Widgets: These can play music directly from your Notion page. Examples include Spotify and SoundCloud widgets.
Here’s a list of all the widgets that Notion supports:
2. Obtaining the Widget Embed Code
After choosing the right widget for your purpose, you need to obtain the embed code from your favorite tool. The embed code is a snippet of HTML code that allows Notion to read the widget and insert it into your Notion page.
Here's how you can find the embed code — we will take the example of Spotify but the same general method works for all platforms.
- Visit the widget provider's website.
- Locate the option to share or embed the widget. This is usually found in the settings or share options. Here’s what the embed URL screen for Spotify looks like:
- Copy the HTML snippet. You can customize the embed URL for color and size for some widgets. Here’s what the Spotify embed URL screen looks like.
Now that you have the embed URL from your preferred tool, it’s time to add it to Notion.
3. Adding the Widget to Notion
Here are the steps to embedding the selecting widget in Notion:
- Create a new Notion page or open the one where you want to add the widget.
- Click in the page body and get your cursor to the place where you want to embed the widget.
- Type "/embed" to pull up the list of widgets you can add and select the right option from the dropdown menu that appears as shown in the below image.
- A new window will pop up. Paste the widget's embed code into the 'Embed Link' field.
- Click on the 'Embed Link' button.
Your widget should now appear on your Notion page. Here’s what an embedded Pinterest board looks like:
4. Adjusting the Widget Settings
Once the widget is available in your Notion page, you can modify it to as per your needs. This includes resizing the widget, changing its position, or modifying its functionality. You can also adjust the size of the widget by clicking and dragging the widget’s corners.
An easier way to embed a widget in Notion is by simply copying and pasting a link in Notion. In fact, you can embed almost any link in Notion without even grabbing the embed code or initiating the embed block.