Andreas Ramos | Professor of Digital Marketing

Use Notebook (NotebookLM) with Gemini

You can use Google Notebook as a library of files for your AI. Upload your documents to Notebook or use its research capabilities to find books, articles, and databases. Connect your Notebook directly to your Gemini chat. Gemini will read your files instead of relying on general public internet data.

When you connect your AI to Notebook, you have a basic RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) system with a dedicated Knowledge Base (KB). This works without additional tools, fees, or complex setups. You can improve your AI for this RAG. See faq-instruction.html.

Note: This FAQ focuses exclusively on using Notebook as a knowledge base for Gemini. It does not cover general configuration or native content generation features within Notebook.

Note: July 16, 2026: NotebookLM was renamed to Notebook. I updated the product name in this FAQ. Google dropped the acronym "NLM".

Practical Uses for Notebook

Use Notebook to organize and analyze information:

  • Household Management: Upload mortgage statements, utility bills, and insurance policies to help organize finances and track expenses.
  • Medical Records: Upload medical records to help Gemini interpret medical issues in clear language.
  • Education: Upload textbooks, class notes, handouts, and graded tests to generate summaries, study guides, and quizzes.
  • Office: Upload corporate manuals, marketing material, and spreadsheets to analyze content and generate summaries, audio, or video.

For large-scale research, you can connect multiple Notebooks to Gemini. Because each Notebook supports up to 300 files, you can add (for example) five Notebooks with over 1,200 documents, articles, and books for complex research.

Tip: Start small. Create one Notebook with ten documents to see how this works before adding hundreds of files.

Add Sources and Files to Notebook

  1. Open Notebook and click + Create New.
  2. In the "Search the Web for New Source" box, describe your topic.
  3. Select Fast Research for quick results or Deep Research for more comprehensive findings (this may take 10-15 minutes).
  4. You can also upload files from your computer, add website URLs, select files from Google Drive, or paste the text.
  5. Click the arrow to start its search.
  6. When it's ready, a list of sources appears on the left; click Import to add them to your Notebook.
  7. Sources are listed alphabetically. Mouse over an item and click the three dots to rename or delete.
  8. Use the + tab at the top-right of the list to organize files by topic, add emojis, or rename categories.

Connect Your Notebook to Your Gemini AI

To turn your Notebook into a knowledge base for your AI:

  1. Open Gemini AI.
  2. In the chat input box, click the + sign.
  3. Select More Uploads | Notebooks and choose your Notebook.

Gemini will automatically add new files or adjust for changes in the connected Notebook.

Tip: You can add files to your AI so it uses ONLY the data in your Notebook. Otherwise, the AI will be helpful and use general training data, which is billions of pages, which introduces the possiblity of hallucinations. By telling the AI to STRICKLY use only your data, it won't add wrong information. However, this means you must review the files that you added to Notebook. If you add bad information, the AI may use that. Review your files carefully for accuracy and no contradictions. To add these files, see faq-instruction.html.

What Else Can Notebook Do?

You can transform your research into shareable material. NotebookLM can create audio conversations, summaries, reports, flashcards, quizzes, videos, mind maps, infographics, slide decks, and more. These can be shared via email or posted to your website, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other platforms.

To collaborate with others, click the Share button at the top of your Notebook and add viewers or editors.

Notes about Notebook

  • Source Quality: Notebook uses the sources you add. Avoid low-quality content, such as unreliable YouTube videos, to ensure high-quality results.
  • Privacy: Notebook doesn't use your uploaded material for Google’s AI training.
  • Security: For corporate environments, use the enterprise version of Notebook.
  • Limits: Up to 500,000 words per file, 200 MB per file, and 50 sources per Notebook. Google Pro accounts accept 300 sources per Notebook.
  • File Formats: PDF, Markdown .md, HTML, XML, plain text, Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Microsoft Word, images, audio (MP3/WAV), and YouTube URLs.
  • Languages: 80 major languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Danish, and Chinese.