Notebooks

Notebooks are the way you organize projects in NotebookLM. They are similar to how folders organize the files on your computer. Each notebook is totally separate, so NotebookLM can’t access information from multiple notebooks at the same time.

Sharing notebooks

You can share notebooks by opening a notebook and clicking the Share icon in the top-right corner of the screen. You can grant either Viewer or Editor access to another user by adding their email address.

A viewer will have read-only access to all the source documents and notes you shared with them in the shared notebook
An editor will be able to view, add, or remove sources and notes in your shared notebook as well as share it further with other users

Personal gmail accounts can share a notebook with up to 50 other individual users, but can't share with Google Groups.

Enterprise or EDU accounts (e.g. [email protected] or [email protected]) can share a notebook with an unlimited number of individual users and google groups within the same organization.

Notebook Guide

When you open a notebook with sources loaded, the app instantly generates a Notebook Guide that summarizes all source documents automatically, and give you a big-picture view of the entire notebook, with quick links to generate FAQ, Briefing Doc, Table of Contents, and Timeline based on all content in the Notebook.

Audio Overview

Audio Overviews are lively “deep dive” discussions between two AI hosts who summarize key topics in your sources. Note that Audio Overviews are not meant to be a subjective view of a topic of the AI hosts, but simply a reflection of the source content that you have uploaded.

How to generate an Audio Overview:

Open an existing notebook (or create a new one and upload some sources)
Open the Notebook guide
Click on the Generate button.
1. Alternatively, you can click on the Customize button and add a steering prompt to help the audio focus on a specific topic. You can input a steering prompt that is 500 character long max.
Wait for several minutes

Note: you need edit access to a notebook in order to generate or delete an Audio Overview.

How to load an Audio Overview:

Only applicable to notebooks that have previously generated Audio Overviews

Open an existing notebook
Open the Notebook guide
Click on the Load button
Wait for several seconds

How to share an Audio Overview:

Option #1: Generate an Audio Overview, then share it by clicking on the share icon in the audio player and generating a public share URL.
- Public sharing is only enabled for consumer accounts, and currently disabled for Workspace Enterprise or EDU accounts
- Only notebook owners or editors are able to generate a public share URL for the generated audio, and they can later turn off public sharing by toggling off Public access in the sharing panel
- Once an audio is deleted or regenerated, any previously generated public share URL will no longer work
Option #2: Generate an Audio Overview, then share the entire notebook with another user. They will be able to load the same Audio Overview once they click into Notebook Guide.
Option #3: Download the Audio Overview through the Download button within the three dots on the player and share the downloaded audio.

Audio Overview limitations:

Audio Overviews (including the voices) are AI-generated, so there might be inaccuracies and audio glitches.
Audio Overviews are only in English at this moment.
It can take a few minutes to generate an Audio Overview (feel free to do other things while generation is in progress).
You can’t interrupt the AI hosts yet to join the conversation.

Notebook Limitations

You are limited to 100 notebooks