NotebookLM
Google's AI research assistant that answers questions and builds overviews from your uploaded sources.
Liked for answering questions grounded strictly in uploaded documents1234 and for turning sources into podcast-style audio and video overviews, often for studying.5678910 The most common complaints are flaky or stagnant UX1112 and answers that can still be wrong even when the source is supplied.1314
Why people recommend it
Grounded document Q&A · 3
Answers questions about uploaded docs with references back to the sources, and sometimes abstains rather than making things up.
“You can do that with Google's NotebookLM.”
“I use nouswise or nblm that sometimes abstain instead of making things up.”
Show 1 more
“i used the official k8s docs and fed them as sources to NLM.”
Audio overviews · 3
Podcast-style walkthroughs are useful for learning while driving, walking or doing chores, and one commenter rated its voices above ElevenReader's.
“I used it to listen to a high level walkthrough of interesting and entertaining code while driving to work.”
“I find NotebookLM helps a lot at this point”
Show 1 more
“I found NotebookLM podcast voices better than ElevenReader's”
Video overviews · 3
Commenters use it to turn explainer docs and announcements into short video summaries.
“I like NotebookLM's video creation abilities for certain things.”
“I used NotebookLM to create a brief video summary after going through the system card and announcement blog”
Show 1 more
“I'll even pipe the output into NotebookLM to make a video sometimes.”
Study aid · 3
Used for studying, including generating podcasts, slides and flashcards from lesson material.
“I have been using NotebookLM for studying and really like it.”
“I fed my core curated lessons into NotebookLM to generate supplemental podcasts, slides, and flashcards”
Show 1 more
“You may want to check out NotebookLM too.”
Reference checking · 3
Teams load a full corpus, such as game lore or official docs, to check and reference facts.
“the main AI-related tool we use is a NotebookLM with all lore for checking/referencing things”
“NLM for content with official sources.”
Show 1 more
“I pay for Gemini solely for access to NotebookLM for these purposes”
Document extraction · 1
One commenter reports large time savings extracting information from documents, including OCR and handwriting.
“notebooklm can now manage ocr/htr without a third party”
Caveats and dissent
Flaky UX · 2
The interactive mode is called super-flaky, and one user says the UX hasn't improved since launch.
“NotebookLM does have interactive mode but it has been super-flaky to say the least.”
“I'm still annoyed the UX hasn't improved since launch.”
Grounded errors · 2
It can still give wrong answers or insert wrong claims even when working from the user's own sources.
“I use them for comparable tasks pretty often and they usually sail through them flawlessly”
“I used Google Notebook LM to create the presentation, based on my notes”
Dry narration · 1
One user found its speech too dry for audiobook use.
I am doing something similar but mix more simpler and didn’t even get to the stage of building an llm tool. I am just using ChatGPT to distill common learning books and set aside 1 hr thrice a week. I made considerable progress, to me and then I used Italki to confirm. I used voice mode on ChatGPT to learn the tones for mandarin, and general vocab and sentence structure while for Japanese it helped me expand proper s
Low-effort output · 2
Commenters complain about mass-produced NotebookLM content and padded slide decks.
“about 50% of digital technical content in my YouTube feed is now NotebookLM slop”
“notebooklm will add 100 slidedecks for juiceness”
Rename confusion · 2
A rename to Gemini Notebook annoyed users who had to explain the change to others.
“a tool I use and have helped friends adopt it”
“I have been using NotebookLM for studying and really like it.”
Often compared with
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook 5 mentions
- Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI 2 mentions
- Show HN: Sezwhere – Ask any document "where does it say that?" (built on Jev) 1 mention
- A third of Perplexity's citations don't contain the number they're cited for 1 mention
- Zed: Delta 1 mention
- item 49148976 1 mention
Data: notebooklm.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 27
“You can do that with Google's NotebookLM.”
“I use nouswise or nblm that sometimes abstain instead of making things up.”
“I'll even pipe the output into NotebookLM to make a video sometimes.”
“I like NotebookLM's video creation abilities for certain things.”
“I'm still annoyed the UX hasn't improved since launch.”
“I used NotebookLM to create a brief video summary after going through the system card and announcement blog”
“I used Google Notebook LM to create the presentation, based on my notes”
“a tool I use and have helped friends adopt it”
“they did have a search integration to pull in references. You may want to try this again.”
“I used it to listen to a high level walkthrough of interesting and entertaining code while driving to work.”
“I have been using NotebookLM for studying and really like it.”
“notebooklm can now manage ocr/htr without a third party”
“I found NotebookLM podcast voices better than ElevenReader's”
“I use them for comparable tasks pretty often and they usually sail through them flawlessly”
“the main AI-related tool we use is a NotebookLM with all lore for checking/referencing things”
I am doing something similar but mix more simpler and didn’t even get to the stage of building an llm tool. I am just using ChatGPT to distill common learning books and set aside 1 hr thrice a week. I made considerable progress, to me and then I used Italki to confirm. I used voice mode on ChatGPT to learn the tones for mandarin, and general vocab and sentence structure while for Japanese it helped me expand proper s
“You may want to check out NotebookLM too.”
“i used the official k8s docs and fed them as sources to NLM.”
“NLM for content with official sources.”
“I pay for Gemini solely for access to NotebookLM for these purposes”
“notebooklm will add 100 slidedecks for juiceness”
“I find NotebookLM helps a lot at this point”
“I fed my core curated lessons into NotebookLM to generate supplemental podcasts, slides, and flashcards”
“NotebookLM does have interactive mode but it has been super-flaky to say the least.”
“(similar to NotebookLM)”
“about 50% of digital technical content in my YouTube feed is now NotebookLM slop”
“I am still happy to pay Google because of their ecosystem or Gemini app, NotebookLM, Colab, gemini-cli, etc.”