The short answer
Gemini Notebook, called NotebookLM until Google renamed it on 16 July 2026, is Google's research assistant that answers questions using only the sources you add, such as PDFs, Google Docs, websites and YouTube videos, with clickable citations. It also turns sources into Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, slide decks and quizzes. The free Standard plan allows 100 notebooks with 50 sources each, and paid Google AI plans raise those limits.
| Made by | Google, United States |
|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes: Standard, 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, limits refresh every five hours |
| Models | Google's Gemini models; higher plans get more model access |
| Best at | Cited answers from your own documents, audio and video summaries, study material |
| Shows sources | Yes, every answer cites the passage in your sources |
| Team plans | Qualifying Google Workspace plans and Gemini Notebook for Enterprise via Google Cloud |
| Your data | Personal accounts: not used to directly train models unless you give feedback. Work and school accounts: no human review, no training. |
What NotebookLM is now: Gemini Notebook
If you are looking for NotebookLM, you are in the right place. On 16 July 2026 Google renamed it Gemini Notebook. Google says it is the same standalone product, now connected to more of its apps, and it still lives at notebook.google. The idea has not changed since it started life as Project Tailwind at Google I/O 2023: you give it your own sources, and it answers using those sources, with citations you can click to check.
That one design choice makes it different from ChatGPT, Claude or the Gemini chat app. A general chatbot answers from everything it learned plus the web. Gemini Notebook answers from the PDFs, Google Docs, slide decks, spreadsheets, web pages, YouTube videos and audio files you put into a notebook. Google's help centre is explicit that responses inside Gemini Notebook are grounded only in your notebook sources. Google says more than 30 million people and over 600,000 organisations use it.
Under the hood it runs on Google's Gemini models. Google does not name the exact model version on its plan or help pages. What it does say is that higher plans get more model access: the plans table lists "Access" for the free Standard and Plus tiers, "Higher access" for Pro and "Highest access" for Ultra.
What Gemini Notebook is best at, with real examples
Answering questions from a pile of documents
This is the core job. Load the twelve reports, contracts or research papers you were meant to read, then ask direct questions: what does each one say about pricing, where do they disagree, what is the earliest deadline. Every claim comes with a numbered citation that jumps to the passage it came from. For a consultant, a lawyer, an analyst or a student, that is the difference between "the AI said so" and "page 14 of the supplier contract says so".
Turning reading into listening and watching
Audio Overviews turn your sources into a podcast-style summary. There are four formats: the default two-host conversation, The Brief (one speaker, key points in under two minutes), The Critique (two hosts give constructive feedback on something like an essay or a design document) and The Debate (two hosts argue different sides). You can choose from more than 80 languages and three lengths, Shorter, Default and Longer, although Longer works in English only. You can add a focus prompt, such as "only cover the risks" or "explain this for a new starter". In English, Interactive mode lets you join while listening and ask the hosts a question by voice.
Video Overviews do the same with narrated visuals. Since September 2026 there are also Short Video Overviews of about 60 seconds, available in more than 80 languages. Since 16 October 2026, slide decks and Video Overviews have a guided creation flow: Gemini Notebook suggests focus topics, formats and visual styles from your sources, and a Review toggle lets you check the slide outline or the video producer notes before anything is generated.
Study and training material
Gemini Notebook leans hard into learning. Under Reports you will find Interactive Learning Overviews, which walk through your notes and readings step by step and mix in slides, quizzes and flashcards. Quizzes now include short-answer, multi-select and fill-in-the-blank questions, and you can ask the notebook where to focus after a quiz. On 29 October 2026 Google added hundreds of free textbooks from OpenStax, Open Textbook Library and S Chand Publishing: choose Add sources, then Textbooks. This is just as useful for onboarding at work as for exams. Load your handbook and process documents, and new hires get a quiz that only asks about your company's rules.
Light data analysis
Since the July relaunch, every notebook can get a secure cloud computer that writes and runs code to analyse your sources. Google rolled this out first to Google AI Ultra users and to Workspace business customers with AI Ultra Access or AI Expanded Access, and said in July that it would reach all Pro users on the web over the following weeks. If you are on the free plan, expect chat and summaries rather than calculations.
Where Gemini Notebook falls short
- It only knows what you give it. This is the strength and the catch. A notebook built from three one-sided articles gives confident, well-cited answers that are still one-sided. The citations prove the answer came from your sources, not that your sources are right.
- Free-plan limits arrive quickly on real projects. The free Standard plan allows 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook. Each source can be up to 500,000 words or 200 MB. A due-diligence project or a literature review can pass 50 sources fast.
- Usage now depends on how hard you work it. Since 2 September 2026, personal accounts get compute-based limits that refresh every five hours instead of daily caps. Long chats, many sources and heavy features such as Video Overviews use more. When you hit the limit you can defer an output and let it generate later.
- It is not a writing tool. It summarises and explains well, but a polished client email or a final report still reads better when you take its notes into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and edit there.
- Some features are uneven. Longer Audio Overviews and Interactive mode are English only, Google warns that Audio Overviews can contain inaccuracies or audio glitches, and the mobile app has limitations for some features.
How to get better results from Gemini Notebook
- Make one notebook per question, not per topic. "Should we switch payroll provider?" beats "HR stuff". Fewer, more relevant sources give sharper answers.
- Curate your sources before you ask anything. Remove duplicates and old versions. Add at least one source that disagrees with the rest, so the notebook can show you the other side.
- Set custom instructions. Tell the notebook who you are and what you need, for example "I am a procurement manager. Answer in plain English and flag any figure older than 2025." One set of instructions applies whether you chat in Gemini Notebook or in the Gemini app.
- Ask for the citation, then click it. Treat every important number as a claim until you have opened the passage it points to.
- Use the Studio outputs for different readers. A Brief for your manager, a quiz for the new starter, a slide deck for the meeting. Use the Review toggle so you fix the outline before you spend your usage on the final version.
- Save what you learn in Gemini into the notebook. Since 23 October 2026 you can type @Gemini Notebook in the Gemini app and ask it to save key notes or add sources to a notebook. Over a few weeks that builds a private research library.
Our Gemini Notebook lessons walk through these habits with short exercises, and Stacks shows which tools people pair it with for research.
Gemini Notebook inside the Gemini app: one important difference
Notebooks you create now appear in the Gemini app too, and renaming, adding sources or changing instructions in one app syncs to the other. The Gemini Notebook Connected App lets you create, edit or delete notebooks, add or remove sources, save notes, list your notebooks and ask questions from a normal Gemini chat. Gemini can also use the connection on its own when a prompt clearly needs it.
The detail to remember: answers inside Gemini Notebook use only your sources, while answers in the Gemini app use your notebook sources but may also use web search and other tools. If you need an answer you can trace to your own documents, for a client report or a compliance question, ask in Gemini Notebook itself. The Studio outputs, such as Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, infographics and slide decks, are only made in Gemini Notebook. Notebooks you have shared with others do not appear in Gemini, and a notebook that contains Gemini chats cannot be shared. The Connected App is on by default, except in the European Economic Area, where you switch it on in the Gemini app under Settings, then Connected Apps.
Privacy settings and where to find them
For personal Google accounts, Google says files and chats in Gemini Notebook are not used to directly train its foundational models unless you give feedback. If you press thumbs up or down, the related content can be collected and reviewed by trained teams after it is disconnected from your account, and kept for up to three years. That feedback can include Gemini chats in the notebook, even if your Gemini Apps Activity is off. So the practical setting is a habit: do not rate answers in notebooks that hold anything confidential.
Work and school accounts get stronger terms. With a qualifying Google Workspace or Workspace for Education account, uploads, queries and responses are not reviewed by humans and not used to train AI models, even when you give feedback. Chats with a notebook held inside the Gemini app follow your Keep Activity setting there, and turning that off does not delete your Gemini Notebook data. If your company has Workspace, sign in with your work account for client material rather than a personal Gmail.
Which Gemini Notebook plan suits whom
- Standard (free): for anyone trying it, students and light work. 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook cover most single projects.
- Plus (Google AI Plus): 200 notebooks, 100 sources each and early access to new features. Good for regular users who keep hitting the five-hour limit.
- Pro (Google AI Pro): 500 notebooks, 300 sources each, higher model access and watermark removal outside India, South Korea and Vietnam. The sensible tier for consultants, researchers and anyone using it daily.
- Ultra (Google AI Ultra): 500 or 600 sources per notebook depending on the storage plan and the highest model access. Only worth it if you already use the wider Ultra bundle.
- Workspace and Google Cloud: teams should use a qualifying Workspace plan or Gemini Notebook for Enterprise, which adds advanced sharing, higher limits and extra privacy and security controls.
Who it is not for: if you want an assistant that browses the web, writes final copy and does a bit of everything, start with a general chatbot instead and see our best AI for research and compare pages. Check Google's official plans page for current prices.
Prompts to copy
Brief me on a stack of documents
Using only these sources, give me a one-page brief for [role, e.g. a finance director] on [topic]. Start with the three points that matter most, then list open questions. Cite every claim, and say clearly when the sources do not cover something.
You get: A cited one-page brief with gaps flagged
Find where sources disagree
Compare what each source says about [question, e.g. expected market growth]. Make a table with one row per source: its position, its key number, its date and the citation. Then tell me where they contradict each other and which source has the strongest evidence.
You get: A comparison table that shows the conflicts
Pull out every deadline and obligation
List every deadline, notice period, payment term and obligation in these contracts. For each one give the party responsible, the exact wording and the citation. Sort by date.
You get: A dated obligations list you can check line by line
Focus an Audio Overview
Create an Audio Overview in The Brief format. Focus only on [topic, e.g. the risks for our team] and explain it for [audience, e.g. a new starter with no background]. Skip the history and the methodology.
You get: A short, targeted audio summary for a commute
Build an onboarding quiz
Create a quiz for new hires from our handbook and process documents. Use short-answer and multi-select questions, 15 in total, covering the rules people most often get wrong. Base every question on a cited passage.
You get: A quiz grounded only in your company's documents
Turn research into a slide outline
Create a slide deck for a 10-minute update to [audience]. Eight slides at most: the question, what we found, three supporting findings with numbers, risks, and a recommendation. I want to review the outline before you generate it.
You get: A reviewable outline, then a deck from your sources
Stress-test a draft
Here is my draft [report or proposal] as a source, alongside the research. Act as a sceptical reviewer. List every claim in my draft that the research does not support, every claim it contradicts, and the strongest point I left out. Cite the research for each.
You get: A list of weak claims with evidence
Save research to your library (in the Gemini app)
@Gemini Notebook save the key points from this chat as a note in my notebook about [project], then list all the sources in that notebook.
You get: Your Gemini research saved where you can question it later