Caching & Invalidation

How Notion caches bookmark data and how to force a refresh

How Notion caches bookmarks

Notion caches preview data when the bookmark block is created. The preview becomes part of the page content with no automatic refresh. A bookmark created months ago still shows the original data unless you manually intervene.

Forcing a cache refresh

No debugger or cache-clearing tool. The only method:

  1. Delete the bookmark block
  2. Re-paste the URL
  3. Select “Create bookmark” from the paste menu

Notion re-crawls the page and fetches fresh OG tags.

Bulk refresh limitations

There’s no way to bulk-refresh bookmarks across a workspace. Each one must be individually deleted and re-created. Tedious for pages with many bookmarks.

API-created bookmarks

Bookmarks created via the Notion API cache the same way. The API has no “refresh preview” endpoint – delete and re-create the block.

When caching goes wrong

  • Updated tags but old preview – delete and re-create the bookmark
  • Preview is empty – your server may have errored when the bookmark was created
  • Different previews on different pages – each bookmark caches independently at creation time