Cron (Notion Calendar): the setup order that holds up

Cron and Notion Calendar are the same app. Notion bought Cron on June 9, 2022, and relaunched it under the Notion Calendar name on January 17, 2024. The old cron.com home page now carries a single line, "Cron is now Notion Calendar", and links to the download. Anyone who used Cron before the rename can sign in with the same calendars, and anyone arriving fresh gets the app for free. What changed is less the grid and more the account underneath it, and that is where most setups go wrong.

This guide covers what carried over from Cron, what the Notion link adds, and the order in which to set things up so that a later choice does not undo an earlier one. Every limit quoted below comes from Notion's own help center, checked on October 18, 2026.

From Cron to Notion Calendar: what actually changed

The acquisition post on the Notion blog, Notion acquires Cron, dated June 9, 2022, said Cron would continue as a separate app while the two teams built a shared brand. That shared brand arrived with Introducing Notion Calendar, published January 17, 2024, the same day as the Notion 2.37 release.

Three things are worth knowing if a Cron install from 2023 is still on the Mac:

• The account model is different. A Cron account was its own thing. A Notion Calendar account is tied to exactly one Notion account. If no Notion account exists, signing up creates one with the same email address.
• The login session is shared. Signing out of Notion signs out of Notion Calendar, and the reverse.
• The feature set grew sideways. Notion databases with a date property can now sit on the calendar grid. The core of Cron, keyboard driven navigation, a menu bar view, and fast scheduling, is still there.

The price did not change. The Notion Calendar product page still says "Get Notion Calendar free", and no paid tier is required to use the calendar itself.

The fastest route on a Mac is Homebrew. The notion-calendar cask installs the desktop app with brew install --cask notion-calendar. On October 18, 2026 the cask listed version 1.140.0 and a requirement of macOS 12 or later. Notion's own apps page says macOS 11 and above. The cask is the stricter of the two, so a Mac still on Big Sur should use the direct download instead.

Where Notion Calendar runs, and what each version cannot do

The same account works on web, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. The versions are not equal, and the gaps decide where setup has to happen.

Platform	Status	What it cannot do
Mac and Windows desktop	Full app, menu bar on both	Nothing listed as missing
Web	Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, Arc	No menu bar view
iPhone and iPad	App plus home and lock screen widgets	No search, no week or month view, no scheduling links, no new connections
Android	App plus home screen widget	Same limits as iOS

The mobile list on the apps page is longer than most people expect. On a phone, events cannot be edited unless they were created on iOS and the person is the organizer. Views stop at one, two, or three days. Focus and out of office events cannot be created, and conferencing links have to be pasted by hand.

The practical result is simple. Do every setup step on the Mac. The phone is for reading the day and joining calls, not for configuring the account.

Step 1: choose the sign-in address before anything else

The sign-in address becomes the primary account. Notion's page on creating a Notion Calendar account recommends an address that will always be reachable, and gives the example of a personal account rather than a work one, in case the work account goes away. The same page states that losing access to the linked Notion account means losing access to Notion Calendar.

This matters most for people who used Cron with a company Google Workspace address. That address may now be the primary account by default. If it is, the safe move is to switch the linked account to a personal address now, through the email update process the help center links to, rather than after a job change.

Only one Notion account can be linked. Work calendars are not lost by this. They are added later as secondary calendar accounts, which is the next step.

Step 2: connect calendar accounts in order of weight

Accounts are added under Settings, then Calendar accounts, then Add calendar account. The calendar management page lists three providers: Google, iCloud, and Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft 365.

Each one stalls in its own place:

• Google work accounts can return an authorization error until a Workspace admin marks Notion Calendar as Trusted. The path in the Google Admin console is Security, Access and data control, API controls, Manage Google services, then Configured apps.
• iCloud refuses the normal Apple account password. It needs an app-specific password created at account.apple.com under App-Specific Passwords.
• Microsoft 365 may need IT approval when the organization restricts third-party apps.

Two limits shape how many accounts to connect. The help center says that if more than five calendars cannot be added, it is because performance can be affected past that number. And a new calendar cannot be subscribed to from inside Notion Calendar. Holiday feeds, sports schedules, and shared ICS links have to be subscribed in Google Calendar first, after which they appear automatically.

So connect the account with the most real meetings first, then the second, and stop before the list fills up with calendars that are never looked at.

Step 3: set the default calendar and the time zone once

New events go to one default calendar. To set it, open Settings, pick the account under Calendar accounts, hover over the calendar, and choose Make default calendar. On desktop, right clicking the calendar in the sidebar does the same. The default can also be a Notion database, which is useful for anyone who logs work blocks as database pages.

Time zone handling is the setting that surprises former Cron users most. According to the time zones page, Notion Calendar takes the primary time zone from Google Calendar during the first setup, and after that the two apps keep their own values. A change made in Google Calendar later does not flow back. For travelers, the General tab of the settings page has a Time zones option that asks whether to switch when the device is in a new location. Turning it on is cheaper than fixing a week of events that shifted by eight hours.

The same General tab holds the smaller choices: start of week, whether weekends and declined events show, week numbers, time format, and whether location links open in Apple Maps or Google Maps. These can be changed any time without side effects, which is why they belong after the accounts are settled.

Step 4: reminders, the menu bar, and meeting links

Notifications are split across two places, which is the root of most "alerts work on one device but not another" complaints:

• Default event reminders are not set in Notion Calendar. The Notifications tab sends the user to Google Calendar's own notification settings for each calendar.
• Upcoming meeting notifications are set in Notion Calendar, including how early they fire and which sound they play.

The help center also notes that, for technical reasons, Notion Calendar notifications cannot currently be marked as time-sensitive on mobile. Under a Focus mode on iPhone they may stay silent.

The menu bar view is the part of Cron people remember most. In Settings, Menu bar, it can show a set number of days, include or exclude all-day events and events with no participants, and preview the next event ahead of time. If the icon vanishes behind other menu bar items, hold Command and drag it next to the clock, or turn off Event title so the icon fits.

Meeting links are set per calendar. Google Meet works as soon as a Google account is connected. Zoom is connected under Settings, Conferencing, Configure, and authorized in the browser. Any other tool with a stable URL can be added as a custom connection. The connections page states that FaceTime is not supported, and that when an event has a link in both the description and the conferencing field, joining from the app opens the description link.

Step 5: add Notion databases last

Databases come last because they depend on everything above them. Each Notion workspace has to be connected separately under Notion workspaces, even when several share one email address, and a workspace admin cannot switch the calendar on for everyone.

The database guide sets the rules:

• Up to 20 databases can be added. Press O, or open Cmd + K and type "show Notion database".
• Viewing needs at least Can view access. Editing or adding pages needs Can edit content.
• Dates produced by Formula, Created time, or Last edited time properties are read only on the grid.
• Database items appear only inside Notion Calendar, not in Google Calendar or iCloud.

The last rule is the one that causes real trouble. A project deadline stored as a database page will be invisible to a partner, an assistant, or a phone calendar reading the same Google account. Anything other people need to see should still be a normal event.

What Notion Calendar leaves to other tools

After setup, three gaps tend to remain, and none of them is fixed by a setting.

Travel time. The calendar management page states plainly that travel time is not supported. Two in-person meetings across town can sit back to back with no buffer, and nothing warns about it.

Subscribed calendars. Any feed has to go through Google Calendar on the web first. That is a minor chore once, but it means the app cannot be the only calendar tool in use.

iCloud and Outlook depth. Both are supported, but Google remains the account where every feature works first, and Outlook on mobile was still listed as coming soon on the account page.

For people whose day is mostly video calls, none of this matters much, and Notion Calendar does the job at no cost. For people who move between offices, client sites, and appointments, the missing travel buffer is the gap that shows up every week. A native Mac calendar that measures the trip and blocks it before each event, as described under Travel time, fills that specific hole, and the wider differences between apps are laid out in Compared with other calendars.

What to change first

Open Settings, then Profile, and check which address is the primary account. If it is a work address, change it before doing anything else. Then confirm the time zone and the default calendar, and leave databases for last. If travel between meetings is where the schedule keeps breaking, Caltimate is one desktop calendar that adds measured travel blocks on top of the same Google account.