Images in Notion load slowly or look blurry - how to fix it

If you work in Notion a lot, you have probably pasted a screenshot or photo into a page and noticed one of two things: it loads slowly every time you open the page, or it looks blurry and pixelated even though the original was sharp. Both problems have the same root cause - and both are easy to fix before you paste.

Why Notion images load slowly

When you paste an image into Notion, it gets uploaded to Notion's storage and served through their CDN. If the image is a large PNG or an uncompressed phone photo, Notion stores and serves that full file every time someone opens the page. A team wiki page with 20 high-resolution screenshots can be surprisingly slow to open, especially on mobile or on a slower connection.

Notion does apply some image optimization on its end, but it is not aggressive. You will get much better results compressing images yourself before pasting.

Why Notion images look blurry

This is the opposite problem. Notion limits the display width of inline images to match the page column width - usually around 700-900 pixels on a standard page. If your image is much smaller than that, Notion scales it up and it looks soft.

The fix: make sure your image is at least as wide as the Notion column it will appear in. For full-width images, aim for at least 1400 pixels wide. For images inside a two-column layout, 700 pixels is enough.

The right approach before pasting

1. Crop to just what is needed. A screenshot of a full browser window where only the modal matters? Crop the modal. Open Image crop on toolit and trim the image to the relevant area. Smaller dimensions mean smaller file sizes and faster loads.

2. Compress before pasting. Drop the cropped image into Image compress, switch to WebP at 85% quality, and download. A 4 MB screenshot typically compresses to 200-400 KB with no visible difference at the sizes Notion displays it.

3. Paste the compressed version. The page will load faster and the image will look just as sharp as the original.

Screenshots with text

Screenshots that contain text - terminal output, code, UI with labels - should stay as PNG or WebP, not JPEG. JPEG's compression algorithm introduces artifacts around sharp text edges that make them hard to read. Use WebP at 85% quality for the best combination of small file size and readable text.

Notion on mobile

Images in Notion are noticeably slower on the mobile app when pages are image-heavy. Compressing images before pasting is especially worth doing for pages that are shared with people who access Notion on their phone. A 300 KB WebP loads on mobile data in under a second. A 6 MB PNG does not.

Run your screenshots through Image compress before pasting into any shared Notion page and you will notice the difference on every device.