A Notion desktop app for Mac that keeps two accounts open

The Notion desktop app for Mac is a free download from notion.com/desktop, it runs on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and it can keep a work account and a personal account signed in at the same time through the workspace switcher. That covers most of what people searching "notion desktop mac" want to know. The parts that cause trouble later are less obvious: a login that quietly expires after 90 days, offline pages that have to be marked on each Mac, a new tabs beta that splits windows by workspace, and links that keep opening in the browser instead of the app. Everything below was checked against Notion's own download page and Help Center on 18 October 2026.

Picking the right download

The Notion desktop page offers three macOS builds: Universal, Apple Silicon, and Intel x64. The Universal build runs on either kind of Mac and is the safe choice when in doubt.

The separate builds exist for a reason, and choosing the wrong one produces a specific error. According to the Notion for desktop help article, a Mac that downloads a build for the other processor shows the message that the application "is not supported on this Mac". The fix is to uninstall, check the processor under the Apple menu in About This Mac, and download the matching build.

Installation itself is ordinary:

1. Open notion.com/desktop and click Download for macOS.
2. Open the downloaded file and follow the installer.
3. Launch Notion and log in with your email.

Notion updates itself in the background. To check by hand, click Notion in the menu bar and choose Check for Updates. If a new feature has shipped but does not appear, the help article suggests refreshing with Cmd+R. The FAQ on the same page also shows where to see the last update time: the question mark menu in the left sidebar, then More.

One more default to know about: after installation, Notion is set to open at login. To stop that on a Mac, right click the Notion icon in the Dock, choose Options, and remove the check next to Open at Login.

What the desktop app adds over a browser tab

Notion's help article describes the desktop app as a clean, distraction-free interface without the temptation of browser tabs. In practical terms, three features are only in the app.

Push notifications from inside Notion

The desktop app sends notifications when someone mentions you, assigns you a task, or a reminder you set comes due. In a browser, those depend on keeping the tab open and allowing site notifications.

Search on every new tab

By default, each new tab opens a search window. From there you can jump to a page, start a new page, open a chat with Notion AI, or switch to a tab that is already open. To turn this off, go to Settings in the sidebar, then Preferences, and toggle off Open Search when creating a new tab.

Command Search outside the app

Command Search lets you search Notion or ask Notion AI without bringing the app to the front. It can be triggered by a keyboard shortcut you choose, or from the menu bar on a Mac. The controls sit in Settings, then Preferences: Use Command Search, Show Notion in Menu Bar, and Keyboard shortcut for Command Search.

None of this changes what Notion can store or edit. The content is the same in the browser and the app. What changes is how quickly you get to it and whether interruptions reach you.

Keeping two accounts signed in

This is the part most people install the app for. Notion separates two layers that are easy to confuse.

• An account is an email login.
• A workspace is a space of pages that belongs to one or more accounts.

By default, the workspace switcher at the bottom of the sidebar lists every workspace tied to the email you logged in with. A work workspace on a company email and a personal workspace on a Gmail address are therefore on two different accounts, and the second one will not appear until it is added.

According to Notion's article on creating, joining and leaving workspaces, the steps are:

1. Open the workspace switcher at the bottom of the sidebar.
2. Click Add another account.
3. Log in to the other account, or create a new one at this step.

After that, the switcher shows both accounts and all of their workspaces, and there is no need to log out of one to use the other. The same article notes that a personal address such as gmail.com cannot auto-join workspaces by domain, so a company workspace normally needs the company email.

Switching is fast once both are in. Click the workspace name at the bottom of the sidebar and choose a workspace. The help article also lists a desktop shortcut, Ctrl+Shift plus a number, where the number matches the position of the workspace in the switcher.

To log out of one account and keep the other, open the switcher and use the three dot button next to the account you want to remove, then Log out. Log out all, at the bottom of the switcher, signs out of everything at once.

The 90 day expiry that removes the second account

There is one line in that help article worth knowing before relying on two accounts: login tokens expire after 90 days. When that happens, Notion logs the accounts out, and any additional account has to be added again through Add another account.

In daily use, this shows up as the second workspace disappearing from the switcher one morning. Nothing is lost. The pages are still in that account, and adding the account again brings everything back.

A few habits keep this from becoming a problem:

• Keep the password, or the sign-in method such as Google or Apple, for each account somewhere you can reach on the day it expires.
• If one account uses a code sent by email, make sure that inbox is reachable from the same Mac.
• When the switcher looks shorter than usual, check for a missing account before assuming pages were moved or deleted.

Offline pages, and why they are per Mac

The desktop app is also the way to work in Notion without a connection. Notion's guide to working offline says all users can view, edit and create pages offline in the desktop or mobile app. Changes save locally and sync the next time the device connects.

The catch is that offline access is set per device. A page marked for offline use on a MacBook is not automatically available offline on an iMac. To mark a page, open it, click the three dot menu at the top right, and turn on Available offline. Settings, then Offline, lists every page already downloaded on that Mac.

Two limits from the same guide matter in practice:

• When a database is downloaded, the first 50 rows come down automatically. Rows beyond that have to be downloaded one by one.
• Sub-pages under a large parent page each need to be marked if they are needed offline.

On Business and Enterprise plans, Notion also downloads recent and favorited pages automatically. On other plans, marking pages by hand is the whole mechanism, so it is worth doing before a flight rather than at the gate.

The new tabs beta and how it splits windows

Notion is testing a different way tabs work in the desktop app. According to the help article on the desktop beta for new tabs, all tabs in a window share one running copy of Notion, so switching tabs is faster, the sidebar stays put, and memory use drops on average when many tabs are open.

The beta needs desktop version 7.39.0 or later. It can be joined from Settings, then Preferences, then Desktop beta, or from a Try Desktop Beta button in the tab bar when it appears. Notion restarts when you join or leave.

For anyone running two accounts, the important change is this: in the beta, each window holds one workspace. A window that had pages from more than one workspace splits into separate windows, tab groups become their own windows, and a link to a page in another workspace opens in a different window. Open tabs carry over, and the classic layout is saved, so leaving the beta brings it back.

That makes the beta a good fit for people who want work and personal pages kept physically apart, and a poor fit for people who like a single window with tabs from both.

Making links open in the app

A frequent annoyance is that a Notion link in Slack or email opens in the browser even though the app is installed. The help article gives the setting pair that controls this:

1. In Notion on the web, go to Settings, then Preferences, and turn on Open links in desktop app.
2. In the desktop app, make sure Open Notion links in browser is turned off.

For a single page, there is a manual route: open the link in the browser, click the three dot menu at the top right, open More, and choose Open in Mac app.

Where the desktop app stops helping

The Notion app is built for Notion. It does not hold the other tools that usually sit next to it during a workday: the inbox, the chat app, the calendar of a second company. People who switch between a work and a personal Notion often also switch between a work and a personal Gmail and Slack, and the workspace switcher only solves the Notion part.

Notion also has no Linux app, according to its own FAQ, so a mixed Mac and Linux setup still needs the browser on one side.

For people who want every daily web app, Notion included, in one window with each account kept in its own session, a multi-account browser for macOS is the other route. The app aggregation browser made by the publisher of this site keeps a separate cookie container for every app, so a work Notion and a personal Notion can stay logged in side by side, along with two Gmails or two Slacks. A second account on the same service is a Pro feature at $7 per month, available during a 14 day trial with no card required. How the containers work is explained on Workspaces, and the list of supported services is on Supported apps.

What to change first

Install the Universal build, add the second account through Add another account, and set a reminder for 90 days out so the expiry does not catch you mid-task. If the real problem is juggling Notion together with other tools under two identities, try SpaceDeck for its 14 day trial with just those daily apps.