- Notion just got 10 times better for writers.
And I do apologize,
but I had to use my most clickbait worthy thumbnail post
for this video because Notion just released a feature
that I've actually been asking them to release
for longer than any other feature I can think of,
one that I've been asking for
ever since I started using the app back in 2018,
and that feature is precise text selection
across multiple blocks.
So welcome back to Thomas Frank Explains.
My name is Thomas Frank.
I explain things primarily Notion on this channel,
and in this video,
I'm gonna be showing you this brand new feature
that I am super pumped about inside of Notion.
So let me show you what I mean.
Now you can actually take a piece of text
and start selecting it across one block,
and then your selection can just keep on going
into additional blocks.
In the past, this was impossible.
In the past, if you wanted to select texts
that existed inside of multiple blocks,
the only way to do it
was to select the entire blocks themselves,
which means that if you are a writer like me
and you're writing a script
and you wanna do precise text selection
across multiple paragraphs, you couldn't really do it.
And that made Notion not as good of a writing app,
as some of the things like Google docs or Microsoft Word
or classic word processors, but now we can actually do this.
And there is one caveat right now to this new feature,
which is that it is only live
to about 50% of Notions public user base,
so if you don't have the feature live yet,
it should be live for you by the end of this month,
and if you are a part of that lucky half,
you should have it right now.
So one more demonstration.
If I want to start selecting this sentence right here,
and I wanna keep going to this sentence, I can do it.
And you'll notice that when I make the selection,
I have this little text formatting menu that pops up,
which allows me to make changes on a textual basis.
So I can make these selected text bold italicized.
I can give it a different color or different background
if I want to,
but in addition to this,
it's blocks are also selected as well.
So if I wanna drag these two blocks,
they're going to be dragged together
just like they would have been
if I had selected them normally.
And in case you do wanna select blocks themselves,
all you to do is click outside of the text area
before you start dragging.
So to the left or to the right,
if you start clicking and dragging,
you're gonna get a block level selection
which will allow you to do the clicking and dragging
or to click the block menu and do any of these operations
that you could normally do.
So kudos to the notion developers who made this,
and now I wanna show you how it works on the mobile apps,
because it does in fact work on the mobile apps as well.
So basically if I want to select text
across multiple blocks on mobile,
all I'm gonna do is bring up my keyboard and my cursor,
double tap to get the little selection handles, I suppose,
and then I can just drag across multiple blocks
like I normally would.
Now, the one thing that you can't do
on mobile apps specifically, not including tablet apps,
but just for your phone is actually click
and drag multiple blocks around
though there is one sort of caveat to that.
If you get out of the text manipulation menu here
by clicking this little back button,
you can actually scroll all the way to the right
and you're gonna see these little up and down arrows.
So because I've selected from a piece of text in this block
to a piece of text in this block,
these two blocks are essentially selected,
and if I hit this down button,
both of those blocks are actually gonna be moved down
in relation to the blocks around them.
There are a couple of other features
that also released very recently that I wanna show you,
so that is what I'm gonna spend
the rest of this video doing,
the first of which being toggled headings.
This is also something I've been wanting for quite a while,
but if you want to actually nest content
and say a video script underneath a heading,
but you wanna actually have it be toggled,
you can do that now.
All you need to do is go ahead
and type that classic slash menu
and just type toggle heading,
and you've got one, two and three for choices.
And these work just like toggles,
except for they're basically bigger text.
Addition to that, there is a new feature
which allows you to actually scroll through database entries
from the page view.
So for example, here's my creators companion,
where I plan all of this content for my YouTube channels,
and if I click into the modal view for one of these,
you're gonna notice
there are now these up and down buttons,
which allow me to navigate through the pages
in this specific database view
without having to click back to the database itself
and then we choose a page to open up.
So that's a really nice feature.
Lastly, there was a tweak in the settings and members area.
If you go over to this my notifications and settings tab,
you can now set a default open on start page
for your Notion workspace.
So right now I've got a defaulting to my last visited page,
but it could actually set it to the top page in my sidebar,
which would allow me to come over to say my favorites area
and drag my personal dashboard to the top,
so I always see my dashboard with my daily tasks, my inbox,
and all of my quick links whenever I start Notion up.
So definitely a lot of exciting releases for sure,
but that new text selection feature,
precisely selecting texts across multiple blocks
is the one that personally I am the most excited about,
because as a YouTube, as a writer,
I'm always writing scripts
and when I get into the editing process,
I want to be able to precisely select text
so I can delete it or cut it or move it around,
go through that whole edit process.
So if you're a writer as well,
I think Notion just got a lot better for your work.
By the way, if you are a writer,
if you're a content creator,
if you are a YouTuber like I am,
you may also wanna check out Creator's Companion,
which is a replication of the exact system
that I use inside of Notion along with my team
to run this YouTube channel,
my main YouTube channel
with more than 2 million subscribers,
my podcast, my two blogs,
basically all of the content creation I do is planned
and managed inside of this singular Notion system
that we've been building and perfecting
for about the past three years at this point.
I've now turned it into a template
and you can use it yourself.
If you wanna check it out,
you can go over to thomasjfrank.com/cc.
It's got a content ideas area
where you can capture all of your ideas
for all of your channels.
There is a validation view,
where you can make sure that you're only working
on the best ideas and using your time wisely,
and there is a robust project management area
where you can see what stage of the production process
each piece of content is at
across all of your different channels
and you can even add tasks to those pieces of content.
So you always know what you're supposed to be doing
for each one.
Once again, thomasjfrank.com/cc.
If you wanna check it out,
there's also a support forum where I answer questions,
so you're definitely not flying blind with this template.
You are again using exactly what my team and I use
to make all of our content.
As always, if you have questions,
you can leave in the comment section down below,
or you can follow me over on Twitter at TomFrankly.
I do check Twitter quite a bit more frequently
than I do for YouTube comments.
So if you have a question,
Twitter is probably the fastest way to get an answer,
but I do check comments quite frequently as well.
Get subscribed if you haven't been already,
I do have more tutorials and templates
coming down the pipeline very soon,
including one on Notion at databases.
So keep your eyes peeled for that one,
and thanks as always for watching,
I'll see you in the next one.
(upbeat music)