10 Life Hacks Every NotebookLM User Should Know
Google may be spending more time promoting its Gemini AI chatbot , but NotebookLM (LM stands for Language Model) builds on the same core AI and takes analysis and deep learning features to the next level.
NotebookLM is built on the idea of a digital notebook where various sources are collected and analyzed. Using the data you import, NotebookLM can create everything from explanatory videos and podcasts to presentation slides and flashcard-based tutorials based on your chosen sources.
This feature-rich app is available on the web , Android , and iOS . If you’ve already tried it and are ready to take your NotebookLM experience to the next level, these 10 tips will help you get there.
You can configure NotebookLM to find its own sources.
The traditional way to get started with NotebookLM is to load it with one or more sources—such as PDFs, web links, or YouTube videos—but the app can also automatically find relevant sources online.
If you want to research a topic but are starting from scratch, this can be very helpful. The “Web Search” field is located in the “Sources” panel, and you can choose between “Quick Search” and “Advanced Search” depending on how quickly you want to get results.
Once the results appear, select the ones you want to use and click “Import.” You can continue searching for new sources as needed, adjusting the information you’re looking for each time.
You can become a “guest” on Audio Overview podcasts.
You may have already experimented with NotebookLM’s Audio Browser feature, which allows you to create realistic-sounding podcasts from your footage, but there’s a way to add your own audio to those podcasts—for example, a caller’s voice to a radio station.
Click the waving hand icon next to any audio review to enter interactive mode, and when you have something to say, click “Join.” The AI-powered hosts will pause to give you a chance to speak, then respond to your comment or question before continuing the podcast.
NotebookLM allows you to customize the display of overviews of individual sources without entering any commands.
Once you’ve loaded all your materials into NotebookLM, you’ll probably want to ask questions about them, but you can set up NotebookLM to provide quick overviews of your sources without requiring you to enter any prompts.
Select an individual source in the Sources panel, and at the top you’ll see a source guide : a handy, AI-generated overview of the source and its contents. It will give you a good overview of the material and help you decide whether to include it in future queries. At the bottom of the guide are also tags covering the source’s key topics—click any of them to have NotebookLM provide you with more detailed information on that specific topic.
With NotebookLM, you can give each chat its own personality.
At the top of each chat panel is a settings button (it looks like three sliders). Click it, then select “Customize” to customize how NotebookLM responds in this conversation: you can assign it a specific role, tailor its response to a specific audience, or work toward a specific goal.
For example, you can ask the AI to answer questions appropriate for a high school level, indicate that you’re preparing a report for a board meeting, or ask the AI to break down answers into short, discrete points. The instructions you specify here will apply to the entire chat until you change them again.
You can upload existing slideshows to NotebookLM to use as reference when creating your own.
NotebookLM can create presentations from your sources—either through a prompt or through the Presentations option in the Studio panel—but sometimes it can be difficult to get those presentations to look exactly the way you want.
You can fix this by loading an existing slideshow and using it as a starting point. Add it as a source, then specify the file name in the new presentation creation prompt: simply tell NotebookLM to use the existing slideshow as a style template, and it will do just that.
With NotebookLM’s data sharing features, your notebooks are accessible to the world.
You don’t have to keep your notebooks private: while clicking the “Share” button on a notebook page lets you collaborate with others on projects (and you control how much they can edit and view), you have other options. If you select “Anyone with the link” under “Notebook Access” and then click “Copy Link,” you’ll get a URL you can share with anyone or publish online. ( Here’s an example from the Made by Google 2025 event.)
This link will take anyone who finds it directly to your notebook. They will have access to their personal chat history, but will not be able to make changes to the original files or Studio content.
You can use NotebookLM to organize your Google Drive.
As you might expect, NotebookLM works well with other Google apps, and if you don’t mind giving it access to your files, the AI-powered tool can be great for searching and extracting information from your Google Drive.
After clicking “Add Sources ,” you’ll need to click the “Web” drop-down menu and select “Drive.” Enter your search term, and you’ll receive a list of matches from your Drive storage. You can then use the checkboxes to select which files to import.
Whether you’re working on your next novel or trying to crunch data from multiple spreadsheets for a business report, it makes it easy to extract information from any file stored in Google Drive.
You can tailor the sources for each question.
You don’t have to use every source for every query: use the checkboxes next to each entry in the Sources panel to tell NotebookLM where to get information (the source overview mentioned above may be helpful in this case). You may need to analyze all but one source, or focus on just one specific source—for example, you have many reports to analyze and want to examine one in particular.
Use Google Docs to create more complex assignments.
If you’re working on truly complex assignments—full of instructions, links, and multi-level questions—it’s best to use separate documents in your notebook. This will give you greater flexibility when composing and editing them, and once created, you can refer to them again and again.
Create a new Google Docs document and then write out the necessary instructions—you can even divide them into sections using headings and bullet points if needed. Then add it as a source in NotebookLM.
As your next task, enter the document’s title and ask NotebookLM to use its contents as a basis for further actions. The AI will confirm that it has read and understood the document and then proceed as instructed.
Upload information from all your notebooks at once to Gemini.
Your NotebookLM notebooks will also be available in the Google Gemini app. Select the “+” button next to the Gemini query window, and NotebookLM will appear in the list of available options. You can then select one or more notebooks to import. This can be useful in many ways, from creating videos and images based on collected footage using Gemini to running queries that analyze multiple notebooks simultaneously (which eliminates the need to switch between them in NotebookLM).