NotebookLM Is Still the Best AI Tool You're Missing Out On

CNET

4 days ago

AI tools are everywhere, each promising to make your daily workflow easier in one way or another. More often than not, they overpromise, underdeliver or require a learning curve to get them to work for you reasonably well. NotebookLM is different. It's incredibly helpful at its most simple function and it just gets better from there. Plus, it's easy to navigate and see what else it can do with minimal poking around.
I always appreciated the concept of what NotebookLM could do when it was first announced and enjoyed casually tinkering with it, but experiencing it in the real world -- and at a time when I needed a tool like it to exist -- solidified how awesome NotebookLM really is to me. It's now my favorite AI tool, ever, and I've never used an AI tool as much.
Powered by Google's Gemini AI, NotebookLM breaks down complex subjects into an easy-to-understand format and helps you brainstorm new ideas. There's now a mobile app for iOS and Android, and new features were just announced during Google I/O last month. It keeps getting better without feeling like it's becoming overstuffed with features just for the sake of it.
Everything Announced at Google I/O 2025 Everything Announced at Google I/O 2025
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Everything Announced at Google I/O 2025
NotebookLM isn't just Google Keep stuffed with AI, nor is it just a chatbot that can take notes. It's both and neither. Instead of asking questions to Gemini, only for it to find an answer from the ether of the internet, NotebookLM will only search through the sources that you provide it. It's a dead simple concept that feels like one of the most practical uses of AI, giving way to the perfect study buddy for classes or work. And Google didn't stop there.
Now it can do so much more, and will reward your poking around to see what it can do for you. And features like its impressive Audio Overviews have since trickled down into Gemini itself, allowing it to be used in a much wider set of Google's products.
Below, I'll cover some of NotebookLM's most interesting features (including the newly announced ones) and how it became one of my favorite AI tools to use.
For more, check out Google's smart glasses plans with AndroidXR.
What is NotebookLM?
NotebookLM is a Gemini-powered note-taking and research assistant tool that can be used in a multitude of ways. It all starts with the sources you feed it, whether they're webpage URLs, YouTube videos or audio clips, allowing you to pull multiple sources together into a cohesive package and bring some organization to your scattered thoughts or notes.
The most obvious use case for NotebookLM is using it for school or work. Think of it -- you've kept up with countless classes and typed notes down for every one and even perhaps recorded some lectures. Sifting through everything individually can eventually get you to some semblance of understanding, but what if you could get them to work together?
Once you've uploaded your sources, Gemini will get to work to create an overall summary of the material. From there, you can begin asking Gemini questions about specific topics on the sources and information from the sources will be displayed in an easy-to-understand format. This alone may be enough for some people just looking to get the most out of their notes, but that's really just scratching the surface.
Available for desktop and mobile
NotebookLM has a three-panel layout.
Screenshot by Blake Stimac/CNET
NotebookLM has been available for a while now on the desktop and is broken into a three-panel layout, consisting of Source, Chat and Studio panels. Both the Source and Studio panels are collapsible, so you can have a full-screen chat experience if you prefer.
While the Source and Chat panels are pretty self-explanatory, the Studio panel is where magic can happen (though some of the features can also be created directly from the Chat panel). This is where you can get the most out of your NotebookLM experience.
The NotebookLM app: The Philosopher's Stone for data, in your pocket
The mobile app for Android and iOS launched the day before Google I/O 2025.
Screenshots by Blake Stimac/CNET
Those familiar with the desktop experience will feel right at home with the new mobile apps for iOS and Android. The streamlined app allows you to switch between the Source, Chat and Studio panels via a menu at the bottom. When you go to the view that shows all of your notebooks, you'll see tabs for Recent, Shared, Title and Downloaded.
While not everything is on the app yet, it's likely just a matter of time before it matches the web version's full functionality.
Audio Overviews
If you didn't hear about NotebookLM when it was first announced, you likely did when Audio Overviews were released for it. Once you have at least one source uploaded, you can then opt to generate an Audio Overview, which will provide a "deep dive" on the source material. These overviews are created by none other than Gemini, and it's not just a quick summary of your material in audio format -- it's a full-blown podcast with two "hosts" that break down complex topics into easy-to-understand pieces of information. They're incredibly effective, too, often asking each other questions to dismantle certain topics.
The default length of an Audio Overview will vary depending on how much material there is to go over and the complexity of the topic -- though I'm sure there are other factors at play. In my testing, a very short piece of text created a five-minute audio clip, whereas two lengthier and more dense Google Docs documents I uploaded created an 18-minute Overview.
If you want a little more control on the length for your Audio Overview, you're in luck. Announced in a blog post during Google I/O earlier this month, users now have three options to choose from: shorter, default and longer. This is perfect if you either want to have a short and dense podcast-like experience of if you want to get into the nitty gritty on a subject with a longer Audio Overview.
You can interact with your AI podcasters
It gets even better. Last December, NotebookLM got a new design and new ways to interact with Audio Overviews. The customize button allows you to guide the conversation so that key points are covered. Type in your directive and then generate your Audio Overview.
Now, if you want to make this feature even more interactive, you can choose the Interactive mode, which is still in beta, to join the conversation. The clip will play, and if you have a particular question in response to something that's said, you can click the join button. Once you do, the speakers will pause and acknowledge your presence and ask you to chime in with thoughts or questions, and you'll get a reply.
I wanted to try something a little different, so I threw in the lyrics of a song as the only source, and the AI podcast duo began to dismantle the motivations and emotions behind the words. I used the join feature to point out a detail in the lyrics they didn't touch on, and the two began to dissect what my suggestion meant in the context of the writing. They then began linking the theme to other portions of the text. It was impressive to watch: They handled the emotional weight of the song so well, and tactfully at that.
Mind Maps
Generating a Mind Map is just one of several powerful features from NotebookLM.
Google/Screenshot by Blake Stimac
I'd heard interesting things about NotebookLM's Mind Map feature, but I wanted to go in blind when I tried it out, so I did a separate test. I took roughly 1,500 words of Homer's Odyssey and made that my only source. I then clicked the Mind Map button, and within seconds, an interactive and categorical breakdown of the text was displayed for me to poke around in.
Many of the broken-down sections had subsections for deeper dives, some of which were dedicated to single lines for dissection. Clicking on a category or end-point of the map will open the chat with a prefilled prompt.
I chose to dive into the line, "now without remedy," and once clicked, the chat portion of NotebookLM reopened with the prefilled prompt, "Discuss what these sources say about Now without remedy, in the larger context of [the subsection] Alternative (worse)." The full line was displayed, including who said it, what it was in response to and any motivations (or other references) for why the line was said in the text.
Study guides and more
If the combination of all that Audio Overviews and Mind Maps could do sounds like everything a student might need for the perfect study buddy, NotebookLM has a few other features that will solidify it in that place.
Study guides
After you've uploaded a source, you can create a quick study guide based on the material that will automatically provide a document with a quiz, potential essay questions, a glossary of key terms and answers for the quiz at the bottom. And if you want, you can even convert the study guide into a source for your notebook.
FAQs
Whether you're using it for school or want to create a FAQ page for your website, the NotebookLM button generates a series of potentially common questions based on your sources.
Timeline
If you're looking for a play-by-play sort of timeline, it's built right in. Creating a timeline for the Odyssey excerpt broke down main events in a bulleted list and placed them based on the times mentioned in the material. If an event takes place at an unspecified time, it will appear at the top of the timeline, stating this. A cast of characters for reference is also generated below the timeline of events.
Briefing document
The briefing document is just what it sounds like, giving you a quick snapshot of the key themes and important events to get someone up to speed. This will include specific quotes from the source and their location. A summary of the material is also created at the bottom of the document.
How NotebookLM really 'sold' me
I already really liked NotebookLM's concept and execution during its 1.0 days, and revisiting the new features only strengthened my appreciation for it. My testing was mostly for fun and to see how this tool can flex, but using it when I "needed" it helped me really get an idea of how powerful it can be, even for simple things.
During a product briefing, I did my typical note-taking: Open a Google Doc, start typing in fragmented thoughts on key points, and hope I could translate what I meant when I needed to refer back to them. I knew I would also receive an official press release, so I wasn't (too) worried about it, but I wanted to put NotebookLM to the test in a real-world situation when I was using it for real -- and not just tinkering, when nearly anything seems impressive when it does what you tell it to.
I decided to create a new notebook and make my crude notes (which looked like a series of bad haikus at first glance) the only source, just to see what came out on the other end. Not only did NotebookLM fill in the blanks, but the overall summary read almost as well as the press release I received the following day. I was impressed. It felt alchemical -- NotebookLM took some fairly unintelligible language and didn't just turn it into something passable, but rather, a pretty impressive description.
Funny enough, I've since become a more thorough note-taker, but I'm relieved to know I have something that can save the day if I need it to.
Video Overviews are on the way
Another feature that was announced during Google I/O was Video Overviews, and it's exactly what it sounds like. There's currently no time frame outside of "coming soon" from the blog post, but it should be a good way to get a more visual experience from your notebooks.
We'd previously heard that Video Overviews might be on the way, thanks to some sleuthing from Testing Catalog. The article also mentioned that the ability to make your notebooks publicly available and view an Editor's Picks list of notebooks will eventually make their way to NotebookLM. The Editors Picks feature has yet to rear its head, but you can indeed now share notebooks directly or make them publicly available for anyone to access.
While we're waiting on View Overviews, here's a preview of one.
If you need more from NotebookLM, consider upgrading
Most people will likely never have the need to pay for NotebookLM, as the free version is robust enough. But if you're using it for work and need to be able to add more sources or the option to share your notebook with multiple people, NotebookLM Plus is worth considering. It gives you more of everything while introducing more customization, additional privacy and security features as well as analytics. It's worth noting that NotebookLM Plus will also be packaged in with Google's new AI subscriptions.
For more, don't miss Google's going all-in on AI video with Flow and Veo 3.