Notion Databases Just Got 10x Better

Notion’s database overhaul centers on making views easier to navigate, filters faster to apply, and linked databases far more flexible—especially for team dashboards. The biggest day-to-day change is a redesigned database UI that surfaces view switching and view controls directly in the workspace, reducing the need to dig through dropdown menus.

At the top of a database, views now appear as tabs across the screen. When there are only a few views, switching becomes a single click rather than a dropdown hunt. A unified “view options” menu consolidates layout and configuration controls into one place. From there, users can rename views, switch layouts (including board, table, and timeline), show or hide the database title, and adjust properties, filters, sorts, and other view-specific settings.

Filters and sorting get a major redesign, with sorting moved to a new location while filters receive the most functional upgrades. The update introduces two filter types: advanced filters (the familiar multi-step, groupable filters) and quick filters (single-step, basic filters). Quick filters are designed for speed and personal tailoring. A key behavior is visibility: quick filters can be saved “for everyone” or left as personal-only. That means a shared team dashboard can still include a view that only the current user sees—without forcing everyone else to adopt the same filter.

Quick filters also come with tradeoffs. They lack some of the dynamic date options available in advanced filters. For example, quick filters can handle a fixed date condition (like “last contacted before December 9, 2021”), but they don’t offer relative options such as “today,” “tomorrow,” or “last week.” To use those dynamic date presets, the filter needs to be converted into an advanced filter.

Linked databases receive the most consequential upgrade. Instead of being tied to a single source database per linked block, a linked database block can now host multiple views sourced from different databases. In a sales dashboard example, one linked view can pull from a “customers” database (“sales by customer”), while another view inside the same linked block pulls from an “organizations” database (“sales by organization”). A new source menu in each linked view lets users swap the underlying database without rebuilding the whole dashboard.

Creating these linked views also gets smoother. When adding a linked view, Notion prompts for a data source database and offers the option to copy an existing view from the original database—useful for reusing complex layouts, hidden properties, or filter/sort setups. The workflow can also start from an empty view, and users can hide the database title to make dashboards cleaner. Finally, views inside the linked database block can be locked independently, separate from locking the underlying database.

Overall, the update keeps core database behaviors—sorting, property management, calculations—while tightening the interface and expanding linked-database power in ways that better match real-world team reporting needs.