In this quick lesson, we’ll cover Icons and Cover images.
Every Notion page can have a Cover Image and a Page Icon. Those aren’t added by default when you create a new Page, but you can add them easily to any Page, at any time.
Copy link to headingPage Icons
Icons are those little images that appear either at the top of a Page when it’s open, or next to the Page’s title in a bunch of places, including the Sidebar, in inline mentions, in databases, and many more places. Icons are great for helping quickly visually identify important pages all across your Notion workspace.
To add a page icon to a page, simply hover your mouse to the top of a page and a little “Add icon” button will appear. When you click on it, the icon will appear and Notion will give your page a random emoji icon. At the same time the icon picker will pop up, which will let you change the icon to any emoji or choose from a set of Notion design icons, which are also in a bunch of colors you can choose from.
[GIF showing this behavior]
You can also go to the third tab in the icon picker and upload a custom image to serve as your page icon. The ideal image size for custom icons is 256×256, but larger files should also work.
Now, whenever your page appears anywhere in Notion, it will be shown with its icon next to it, giving you some additional visual context as to what page you’re exactly referring to.
We use page icons in our own Notion workspace a lot. We also use different icon colors to signify different types of pages. We’ll talk about this more at length later in this course, but it’s important to keep in mind how powerful page icons can be.
Copy link to headingCover images
Now, in addition to the page icon, every single Notion page can have a cover image. Cover images are wide, horizontal pictures that can appear at the top of the Notion page right above its title and next to its icon. I would say they are a little bit similar to YouTube channel banners or Facebook cover images. This is a totally optional feature, and it doesn’t have much functionality just beyond pure aesthetics.
That being said, in the same place where you can find the “Add icon” button, you can also find “Add cover”. Clicking on it will open a little pop-up menu, where you can either choose a cover from a bunch of pre-selected images from Notion, upload your own, or choose an image from Unsplash. If you’re not familiar with Unsplash, it’s a great place to find royalty-free images. Notion is connected to Unsplash, and by searching in that menu, you’ll find images relevant to your search query.
[GIF demonstrating page covers]
In the upload dialog, Notion says that images that are wider than 1500 pixels work best. Keep in mind that the width of your page cover will vary, depending on which device you’re viewing the page on, as well as how you’re currently viewing the page in Notion. This means that it’s hard to perfectly crop an image to make sure it always displayed the same way. It’s best to choose an image that looks good even when cropped in a bunch of different ways.
We love page icons and page covers, and they can really add some useful context and aesthetics to any Notion page. But beyond that, those features don’t have much more functionality. We unfortunately can’t automatically add page icons based on the contents of the page, but we hope that Notion adds this in the future as a feature.
Now it’s time to talk a little bit more about the layout of a Notion page.