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Why users complain about productivity & notes apps

What 583 real negative reviews say

We analysed the 1500 most recent public reviews of Notion (App Store), Todoist (App Store), Bear - Markdown Notes (App Store) (2018-01-20 – 2026-10-18). 583 were 1–3★. Share of those negative reviews tagged with each theme (a review can have several):

Examples, quoted verbatim

“The button for AI is large and centered on the bottom of your screen instead of a search bar like it used to be. There was also a way to turn it off prior and now there isn't. Like yes, it's an inevitable future but can the interface be less inconvenient.” — Notion (App Store), 3★

“I want this to work but its so hard to find where my stuff is placed. I have 4-5 business and there is no clear instructions on where to store data. You should build these things for people who arent that educated in setup and are too busy to really deep dive” — Notion (App Store), 1★

“I will be looking for alternatives apps that do the same things the pro version of Todoist does. £20-£25 per year should be the price range for a product offering like this. For reference, a Formula 1 yearly subscription cost £60, £10 more than what Todoist is” — Todoist (App Store), 1★

“I had a long list of items in a ‘project’ I had laboriously copied ovet from Apple Reminders app. Today opened Todoist and 90% of them were gone without a trace. Not marked completed, not marked deleted, not even appearing at all in the ‘activity’ section as” — Todoist (App Store), 1★

The recurring complaints in productivity & notes apps

1. Slow loading and sync on mobile compared with desktop
2. Data loss or notes/tasks that vanished after sync
3. Redesigns and missing features (offline mode, widgets, recurring rules)

What to do with this

1. Pull your own last 500 reviews and tag them the same way. Your mix will differ from the category's.
2. Fix the theme with the most 1★ reviews first. Pricing complaints often need clearer copy, not a lower price.
3. Reply to every review that names a fixed bug, then edit the reply when the fix ships.

Ready-made replies for these situations: productivity & notes app review reply templates.

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Theme percentages come from our automated tagging of public reviews; quotes are verbatim. Not affiliated with Apple, Google or the apps named.