How to Use NotebookLM (Now Gemini Notebook): A Beginner’s Guide

Trackline Academy · Updated August 16, 2026 · All articles

To use NotebookLM, go to notebook.google.com, sign in with a Google account, create a new notebook, and add your own material as "sources" (a PDF, a Google Doc, a web page, a YouTube link). Once your sources are in, you type questions in the chat and NotebookLM answers using only those documents, with clickable citations pointing to the exact passage it drew from. That grounding is the whole point: unlike an open-web chatbot, it works from what you gave it, not from the entire internet.

If the name looks unfamiliar, you have not missed anything. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026, and both names are still floating around. This guide walks through the current product from scratch: the rename, the three panels you will use, adding sources, asking grounded questions, saving notes, and generating your first Audio Overview.

What NotebookLM actually is

NotebookLM is a research and note-taking tool built around one idea: it only knows what you feed it. You upload your documents, and it reads, summarizes, and answers questions strictly from that material. Ask it something your sources do not cover and it will tell you it cannot find the answer, rather than inventing one from general knowledge.

This is the key difference from a general chatbot like ChatGPT or the main Gemini app. Those tools generate answers from everything they absorbed during training plus, sometimes, a live web search. NotebookLM deliberately narrows the world down to your sources, so every answer traces back to a document you chose. That makes it far better suited to studying a set of readings, digging through a long report, or building a personal knowledge base you can trust. It still uses a powerful language model to summarize, compare, and connect ideas, it just does that work inside the fence you set.

The rename: NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook

In July 2026, Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook and folded it into the wider Gemini family. Importantly, it stayed the same standalone research tool. No features were removed, your existing notebooks and sources carried over, and shared links keep working through automatic redirects.

A few practical notes. The web address moved to notebook.google.com, and the old notebooklm.google.com still redirects there, so old bookmarks are fine. Because the rollout was gradual, you may see both names at once: the app might say "Gemini Notebook" while a help page still reads "NotebookLM." That is expected, and everything in this guide applies to both.

The three panels: Sources, Chat, and Studio

Open any notebook and you will see three areas. Learning what each one does is most of the learning curve.

• Sources (left) is your library. Every document, link, and pasted note you add lives here. You can select which sources a question should draw from.
• Chat (middle) is where you ask questions and get answers grounded in the selected sources, complete with citations.
• Studio (right) is where NotebookLM generates things from your sources: Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, Mind Maps, study guides, and more. Your saved notes also live here.

On the mobile app the same three areas appear as a bottom bar. Same tool, same flow.

Step 1: Add your sources

A brand-new notebook is empty and cannot answer anything yet, so start by adding sources. Click "Add source" to bring in a wide range of material. As of 2026 the supported types include Google Docs, Microsoft Word files, PDFs, plain text and Markdown, CSV files, Google Slides and PowerPoint, Google Sheets, images, audio files, web page URLs, YouTube links, ePub files, and text you paste in directly.

Two things to know before you load up:

• YouTube links import the transcript, not the video. The video must be public and have captions, and NotebookLM reads the text of what was said, not the footage or audio itself.
• There are limits, and they depend on your plan. On the free tier you get up to 50 sources per notebook, and each source can be large (up to around 500,000 words, or a 200 MB upload). Paid tiers raise the source count considerably. These numbers change over time, so check the current page before relying on an exact figure.

A good first notebook is small and focused. Add three or four documents about one topic rather than dumping in everything you own. Focused notebooks give sharper answers.

Step 2: Ask grounded questions and read the citations

With sources loaded, type a question in the chat. Try something broad to start, like "Summarize the main arguments across these sources." The answer comes back grounded in your material, and this is the part that makes NotebookLM special: it includes inline citations, little numbered markers, showing exactly where each claim came from.

Those citations are interactive. Hover over one and you see the quoted passage it refers to. Click it and NotebookLM jumps you to that exact spot in the source. This turns "trust me" into "here, check for yourself," which is the whole reason to use a grounded tool for research.

You can also steer the style. NotebookLM lets you set a response style, such as a default answer or a more explanatory "learning guide" mode, and adjust the length. Reach for the learning mode when you are studying and want it to walk you through the reasoning.

Always verify the citations

Here is the honest caveat every beginner needs. Grounding makes NotebookLM much less likely to make things up than a general chatbot, but it is not perfect. It can still misread a source or overstate a claim. The habit that protects you is simple: for anything that matters, click the citation and read the original passage. The tool makes this easy on purpose. Grounded is not the same as guaranteed.

Step 3: Save the answers you want to keep

When an answer is worth keeping, save it as a note. NotebookLM turns any chat response into a saved note and preserves the useful parts, including tables and the clickable citations. Your notes collect in the Studio panel, so a notebook becomes both a question-answering tool and a tidy record of what you worked out. Instead of re-asking the same question next week, you save the good answer once and come back to it, citations intact.

Step 4: Generate your first Audio Overview

The feature that made NotebookLM famous is the Audio Overview: a spoken, podcast-style discussion of your sources that you can listen to. To make one, open the Studio panel and choose Audio Overview. NotebookLM reads your sources and produces an audio episode from them, which is a genuinely different way to review material on a commute or a walk.

You get a few formats. The default is a "Deep Dive" with two AI hosts talking through your material together. There is also a short single-speaker "Brief" for quick takeaways, a "Critique" that evaluates something like an essay or draft, and a "Debate" where the two hosts argue different sides. You can nudge the focus with a short prompt, set a length, and pick from many output languages.

On the free tier you can generate a few Audio Overviews per day (three, as of 2026), which is plenty for learning, and higher tiers allow more. For your first one, use a focused notebook, let it run the default Deep Dive, then listen with the sources open. It is the fastest way to understand why people love this tool.

The one rule that trips people up: no cross-notebook answers

Each notebook is its own sealed world. A question in one notebook can only draw on that notebook's sources. NotebookLM will not reach into your other notebooks to answer, even if the perfect document is sitting one notebook over. Google states this plainly: a single answer cannot pull from multiple notebooks at once.

The practical takeaway is to organize deliberately. Group sources you will want to ask across together into one notebook, and do not scatter documents that belong together across five notebooks, or no single answer will ever see the whole picture.

Putting it together

That is the full beginner loop: create a focused notebook, add sources, ask grounded questions and check the citations, save the good answers as notes, and generate an Audio Overview to review by ear. Keep three truths in mind, that it only knows your sources, that it still needs your verification, and that each notebook stands alone, and you are already using NotebookLM the way researchers do.

Frequently asked questions

Is NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) free to use?

Yes. There is a free tier that only requires a Google account, and it is plenty for learning: you can add up to 50 sources per notebook, ask a daily allowance of questions, and generate a few Audio Overviews per day. Paid Google AI plans raise those limits. Numbers and prices change over time, so check the current plans page before deciding.

Why do I see both "NotebookLM" and "Gemini Notebook"?

They are the same product. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026, and the rollout was gradual, so both names still appear across the app, help pages, and older tutorials. The web address also moved to notebook.google.com, with the old notebooklm.google.com address redirecting there. Nothing about how you use the tool changed.

Can NotebookLM make mistakes if it only uses my sources?

Yes, though less often than a general chatbot. Grounding it in your documents cuts down on invented facts, but it can still misread a source or overstate a point. That is exactly why the citations exist: for anything important, click the citation and read the original passage yourself. Treat NotebookLM as a fast, careful assistant whose work you still check.

Related guides

• NotebookLM Audio Overviews: Documents Into Podcasts
• Is NotebookLM Free?
• NotebookLM Is Now Gemini Notebook: What Actually Changed
• What Course Is Right for Me?
• How to Use Google Gemini: A Beginner's Guide