Motion doesn’t have an affiliate program, so this troubleshooting guide has zero commission interest — just fixes.
The Motion app promises to eliminate the mental load of scheduling. And honestly, when it works, it delivers on that. When it doesn’t work, it’s a specific kind of frustrating — because you’ve handed your schedule over to something that’s now broken and you don’t know what’s on your plate.
I’ve dug into every common Motion failure mode I could find. Here’s what actually fixes them.
TL;DR: Most Motion problems fall into three buckets: calendar sync failures (usually expired OAuth tokens), AI scheduling issues (usually overcommitted schedules or missing task metadata), and loading failures (usually extension or cache conflicts). Start with the sync check, then work your way through these fixes.
Fix 1: Calendar Not Syncing (Start Here)
This is the most common Motion complaint. Your Google or Outlook calendar shows a connection in Motion’s settings, but events aren’t flowing in — or they’re showing stale data.
The root cause is almost always an expired OAuth token. When you connect a calendar to Motion, it gets a token that authorizes ongoing access. These tokens expire or get revoked when you change your password, revoke third-party app access from Google/Microsoft, or hit a session timeout.
The fix is straightforward: Go to Motion Settings > Integrations, find your connected calendar, and disconnect it. Fully disconnect — don’t just toggle it off. Then reconnect and re-authorize. You’ll go through the OAuth flow again, Motion will get a fresh token, and sync will resume.
If that doesn’t fix it within 5 minutes, check the other end. Go to your Google Account (myaccount.google.com) or Microsoft account security settings and look at which third-party apps have access. If Motion isn’t listed or shows limited access, that’s your problem — reconnect from scratch.
One thing worth knowing: Motion syncs calendars on a schedule, not in real time. Changes from Google Calendar can take 5–10 minutes to appear in Motion. Don’t immediately assume sync is broken if you just made a change.
Fix 2: AI Scheduling Not Creating or Moving Tasks
Motion’s core value proposition — the AI that automatically schedules your tasks around your calendar — is also the most mystifying when it breaks.
Tasks are sitting in your list unscheduled. Or Motion keeps pushing a task out for days and never actually places it. Or tasks you scheduled for today are showing as overdue with no explanation.
Let me explain what’s actually happening.
Over-committed schedule. Motion can only schedule tasks into open time. If your calendar is packed with meetings, blocked focus time, lunch, and personal events, there’s nowhere to put the task. Motion will defer it indefinitely rather than double-book. Open your calendar view in Motion and look for genuine white space. If you don’t see any, that’s your problem — not a bug.
Missing or vague task metadata. Motion’s scheduler needs duration and deadline to work. A task with no deadline gets low priority and may never appear. A task with duration set to “0 minutes” causes weird behavior. Go through your unscheduled tasks and make sure every one has a realistic duration and a deadline you actually mean.
Deadline before scheduling horizon. If you have a task due tomorrow but it needs 4 hours and you have no 4-hour block available before tomorrow, Motion may mark it as impossible to schedule. The fix: either move the deadline, reduce the duration estimate, or clear time on your calendar.
Workspace mismatch. Motion supports multiple workspaces. If you’re looking at your Personal workspace and the task was created in Work, it won’t appear. Check your active workspace in the top left.
Fix 3: Motion Won’t Load in Browser
Opens to a white screen. Hangs on the loading spinner. Redirects to login but then loops. These browser-based failures all have the same diagnostic approach.
Hard refresh first. Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac. This bypasses cached assets and forces a fresh load. If this fixes it, you were loading cached files from an old version of the app.
Try incognito/private browsing. Open a new incognito window and go to app.usemotion.com. If it loads fine in incognito but not in your regular browser, your issue is one of two things: an extension conflict or corrupted stored data.
Find the conflicting extension. Go to your browser extensions and disable all of them. Reload Motion. If it works, re-enable extensions one at a time until the problem returns — that’s the culprit. Common offenders: ad blockers (uBlock Origin, AdGuard), cookie managers, and privacy-focused extensions that block third-party scripts.
Clear site data. In Chrome: Settings > Privacy > Site Settings > View permissions and data stored across sites, search for “usemotion.com,” and click Delete. This clears Motion’s stored auth tokens and cached data. You’ll need to log back in.
If none of that works, try a different browser entirely. Motion is tested primarily in Chrome. If you’re on Firefox or Safari and seeing consistent issues that Chrome users don’t report, that’s a platform-specific bug worth reporting to Motion support.
Fix 4: Motion Desktop App Crashing
The desktop app crashes on launch, crashes mid-session, or freezes without a clear trigger.
Clear the app cache. This fixes probably 60% of desktop crashes.
On Mac: Quit Motion. Open Finder, press Cmd+Shift+G, type ~/Library/Application Support/Motion and hit Go. Delete the Cache directory inside. Relaunch Motion.
On Windows: Press Win+R, type %AppData%\Motion, hit Enter. Delete the Cache folder. Relaunch.
If clearing the cache doesn’t help, reinstall the app. On Mac: drag Motion from Applications to Trash, empty Trash, then download and install fresh from usemotion.com. On Windows: uninstall via Add/Remove Programs, then reinstall.
One specific crash pattern worth knowing: Motion crashes after waking from sleep on some Macs. This is a known issue in certain macOS versions where background sync processes fail to reconnect. The workaround is to quit Motion before putting your Mac to sleep and relaunch after wake.
Fix 5: Notifications Not Working
You set up due date reminders or daily planning notifications but they’re not appearing.
Check system permissions first. Motion notifications go through your OS notification system. On Mac: System Settings > Notifications > Motion — make sure notifications are allowed and alerts (not just badges) are enabled. On Windows: Settings > System > Notifications, find Motion in the app list and confirm it’s on.
Browser notifications (if you’re on web). Go to app.usemotion.com in Chrome. Click the lock icon in the address bar. Make sure Notifications is set to “Allow.” If it was blocked at some point, you’ll need to explicitly set it to Allow — the browser won’t ask again automatically.
In-app notification settings. Inside Motion: Settings > Notifications. Verify that the specific notification types you want are enabled. Motion has granular controls — you can have daily planning on and due date reminders off.
Timing issue: Motion sends its morning planning briefing at the time configured in your settings. If you changed time zones and didn’t update your Motion timezone, the notification is coming at the wrong local time.
Fix 6: Task Duplicates Appearing
Tasks are showing up multiple times in your list, or completed tasks are reappearing as active.
This almost always traces to a calendar integration issue — specifically, tasks created from calendar events getting duplicated when the OAuth token reconnects and re-imports events that were already pulled in.
Immediate fix: Go through and manually delete the duplicates.
Long-term fix: Check your calendar integration settings. Under Settings > Integrations, look for any duplicate calendar connections — same calendar connected twice under different email addresses or authorization flows. Remove duplicates, keeping only the primary connection.
If your calendar shows recurring events, Motion can sometimes create a new task for each recurrence if the integration is misconfigured. Go to Settings > Calendar Integrations and verify that recurring event handling is set to your preference (single instance vs. all occurrences).
Fix 7: Motion Running Slowly
Every action has a 2–4 second lag. The calendar takes forever to render. Dragging tasks is choppy.
Primary culprit: too many connected calendars with too many events. Motion loads your entire calendar history to understand your scheduling context. If you have 5 years of Google Calendar events across 8 shared calendars all syncing into Motion, you’re feeding it a massive dataset every time you open it.
Fix: Go to Settings > Integrations and limit your calendar connections to what you actually need for scheduling. You don’t need your partner’s “Family Events” calendar feeding into Motion’s scheduling engine.
Browser performance (web version). Motion is a heavy web app. In Chrome, open the task manager (Shift+Esc) and look for Motion’s memory usage. If it’s consistently over 800MB, you’re hitting browser resource limits. Try closing other heavy tabs while Motion is open, or switch to the desktop app.
Desktop app performance. If the desktop app is slow, it’s usually the background sync process consuming CPU. Open Activity Monitor (Mac) or Task Manager (Windows) and look for Motion-related processes. If sync is chewing CPU, a cache clear (Fix 4) usually helps.
Fix 8: Integration Errors (Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom)
Connected integrations stopped working. Zoom links aren’t appearing in scheduled meetings. Outlook events aren’t creating tasks.
The integration error flow: disconnect → reconnect → re-authorize. Every time. Don’t try to diagnose it beyond that unless reconnecting fails.
For Zoom integration specifically: Zoom requires an active Zoom Pro or above account for calendar integration features. If your Zoom subscription lapsed, the integration breaks. Check your Zoom plan at zoom.us.
For Slack integration: Motion’s Slack connection is sensitive to workspace permission changes. If your Slack admin tightened OAuth permissions, Motion’s access may have been revoked. Have your Slack admin check Apps > Installed Apps for Motion.
For Outlook/Microsoft 365: Organization-level Conditional Access policies sometimes block third-party app integrations. This is an IT policy issue, not a Motion issue. Check with your admin if you’re on a corporate account.
When to Contact Motion Support
If you’ve tried all of the above and something specific is still broken, Motion has support at support.usemotion.com. Include:
- What you expected to happen
- What actually happened
- Your plan tier (Individual, Team)
- Whether the issue is browser-only or desktop-only
- Screenshots if relevant
The Motion team is responsive and this is the kind of software where bugs get reported and fixed regularly. If something’s wrong that isn’t covered here, it’s worth submitting.
For more on AI-powered productivity tools and workflow automation, see our guide to best AI project management tools.