How to use NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook)

Step by step

1. Create a notebook. Open notebook.google.com, sign in and click New notebook. Give each subject or project its own notebook, then click the title to name it.
2. Add sources. Click Sources. You can upload files, or choose Websites, Play Books, Drive, Textbooks or Copied text. Paste several links at once, with a space or a new line between them.
3. Read the summary. Once your sources load, the notebook writes a short overview and suggests questions.
4. Find more sources. Type a topic in the search box in the Sources panel. Fast Research and Deep Research search the web and list sources to add. Add only the ones you'd trust. How the two compare
5. Ask questions. Type in the chat. Click a citation number to open the source with the passage highlighted. Untick a source to leave it out of the answer.
6. Save what matters. Click the pin under an answer to save it as a note. Saved answers are view only, and they appear under Notes in the Sources panel.
7. Make something. Open a Studio option, choose its settings and pick Generate now or Generate later.
8. Share. Click Share and add people. A notebook starts as Restricted, so only people you add can open it.

Checked in Gemini Notebook on October 30, 2026. What changed with the rename

What happened when we built a notebook

On October 30, 2026 we started from an empty notebook and added two research paper PDFs by link and one Wikipedia page. Then we timed each step.

Times come from one notebook on one day, and they'll vary with your sources and with demand.

Does NotebookLM use the internet to answer?

Not unless you agree. We asked two questions that weren't in our sources: the capital of France, and who won the 2022 World Cup. Both times the chat said our sources didn't cover it, and offered to do web research.

We said yes to the second one. In about 30 seconds it gave the right answer, with a card offering a research report and web sources to import. Nothing joined the notebook until we chose Import.

That's the main difference from an ordinary chatbot. By default you know where an answer came from, but you also can't use it for general questions without that extra step.

What Studio makes

The options we opened also let you choose the language and which sources to use. They show an AI Usage bar with what you've used and what this will cost, so you can decide before you start. When you're out of limits, Generate later queues it to run by itself.

Play Audio Overviews in any podcast app: Audio Overviews as a podcast

How to use NotebookLM effectively

• Keep notebooks focused. One subject per notebook. In another test the chat mixed two versions of a course in one notebook and gave a confident, wrong time. What happened
• Rename sources from links. A PDF added by link keeps its web address as its name, which makes citations hard to read.
• Be exact. "What score did the base model get on English to German?" works better than "How good was it?"
• Ask for a table. "Compare these in a table: task, data, result" is often more useful than a long answer.
• Check the citations. Click through on anything you'll rely on. The footer says it plainly: it can make mistakes.
• Mind the limits. Free notebooks hold 50 sources; usage refreshes every 5 hours up to a weekly limit. Is NotebookLM free? The limits

For a goal: how to use NotebookLM to study, how to use NotebookLM for research, or eight NotebookLM use cases.

Where KastorFlow helps

KastorFlow is a Chrome extension for Gemini Notebook. It saves AI chats, web pages and whole YouTube playlists as sources, searches every notebook at once, audits a notebook's sources and fills the gaps with sources you approve, and automates the upkeep.

Questions