Gemini Notebook

One thing to consider: whether the free allowance is enough.

Who it is for. For anyone who reads and compares lots of documents: students with lectures, lawyers with contracts, analysts with reports. The notebook answers only from your files, citing the relevant spot in the source, and if they need a summary for the road, it creates a podcast with two hosts.

Who else. For anyone who already has a Google Account for Gemini: the notebook is included in the same Google AI tiers, with no separate payment required. The free tier has its own generation allowance, while Plus at $4.99 per month doubles it.

Who it is not for. Anyone who needs finished slides in Google Slides or a desktop app: presentations here come as a video or PPTX file, and there is no desktop app.

Good fit: section 4 takes you to your first notebook.

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This is a rename, not a relaunch: on Jul 16, 2026 Google gave the product the Gemini Notebook name and a new logo, while notebooks, the notebooklm.google.com address, and the apps stayed the same.

Two names coexist. The new name appears on the storefront, in stores, and in English Help, while Google Help in German, French, and Japanese still calls it "NotebookLM" as of September 7, 2026.

How it grew. The product began in 2023 as a Google Labs experiment with one source type; in three years it gained podcasts, video, web research, and its own cloud computer, and by the rename had more than 30 million users and 600 thousand organizations, according to Google. The people who invented document-based podcasts left Google for their own startup, Huxe, and shut it down on May 22, 2026 because podcasts from files had become a standard market feature.

Three panels: your files on the left, a chat in the center that answers only from them, and nine formats on the right that turn the same files into output with one click.

If you still need to find a research paperfor your notebook, start by searching for publications and authors. Read the sources you pick first, then add the available full text to the notebook.

Sources. You can put PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio recordings, images, Google documents and spreadsheets, EPUB books, and, since Aug 27, 2026, books bought in Google Play Books into a notebook. Google allows up to 500,000 words or 200 MB per source, with no page limit; since May 26, 2026, Google Drive files update automatically in the notebook. You do not have to upload sources: you can find them instead. The search button in the panel offers quick search and Deep Research, which visits hundreds of sites and compiles a report with links.

Answers with citations. The chat answers from uploaded files, and every fact has a numbered citation that opens the relevant part of the source. Since Oct 29, 2025, the model sees the entire notebook through a one-million-token context window, and chat history is saved. Since Jun 8, 2026, it runs on Gemini 3.5 and Antigravity, and the notebook has gained a cloud computer that executes code for calculations using your data. As of Sep 7, 2026, this has rolled out to Ultra and some Workspace business subscriptions, with the rest following in turn.

Podcast. Audio Overview creates a conversation between two hosts based on your files; in the app, you can join it by voice with the "Join" button.

Video and slides. Video Overview creates a video with slides and narration, which is what people call a «presentation»; a T—Zh reviewer got a six-minute video from their texts in July 2026. Since Mar 20, 2026, slides can be edited and exported to PDF and PPTX, infographics are drawn in ten styles, and cinematic Veo 3 video is available only on the Ultra tier and only in English.

For a presentation you will edit in a separate editor, compare Gamma's features. There, the agent and a manual canvas work together.

Other formats. A mind map, a report, flashcards, a quiz and a table with export to Google Sheets are built from the same sources; the full list of nine formats is in the FAQ. You can share a notebook by link, and teachers hand out notebooks to a class through Google Classroom.

What the vendor itself shows. The card header shows Google’s official screen recording from its rename post of Jul 16, 2026: a seven-source notebook completes an answer with citations; the disclaimer strip below the window is cropped out, while the window itself is intact. We did not test the notebook ourselves for this task; figures come from Google Help, the price list, app store listings, and third-party tests.

Step 1. Open notebooklm.google.com, click "Create notebook," and add your first file or link. There is no sign-up beyond a Google Account; podcast and response languages are set manually in Settings.

Apps. The mobile app came out on May 19, 2025 for iPhone and Android.

Computer. There is no desktop app; the notebook lives in the browser, so searches for «download for PC» lead nowhere. Google has no official Chrome extension either; the extension store has only third-party ones.

There are no benchmarks for notebooks, so it does not say “best” here: there are Google’s figures, app-store listings, and one independent hallucination measurement.

Scale. On Jul 16, 2026 Google cited more than 30 million users and 600 thousand organizations, and back in December 2024 people generated 350 years' worth of podcasts in three months. On Google Play the app has more than 10 million installs and 303 thousand reviews with a 4.8 rating; in the US App Store it is 4.86 across 59 thousand ratings (Sep 7, 2026).

Hallucinations. The only independent measurement found was conducted at Northwestern University in September 2025: across 300 documents about the TikTok court case, NotebookLM fabricated at least one claim in 13% of responses, versus 40% for ChatGPT and Gemini. The errors were not fabricated numbers, but overconfidence: the models attributed generalizations to sources that were not there. This is a preprint by one team on one task, collected before Gemini 3.

Google’s word. After moving to Gemini 3.5 in June 2026, Google compared the new version with its own previous one and found it won 65% of pairs across five dimensions, and 78% in finding sources online. This compares the product with itself, not competitors.

Demand. Where it places among document tools is shown under the card title, and the full tool ranking is on the general page.

The notebook itself is free; you pay for the overall Google AI subscription.

Free. All you need is a Google account. Until 09/02/2026, the free tier used item limits: 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, 50 questions and 3 podcasts per day, and 10 deep-research requests per month. Since 09/02/2026, item limits have been replaced by a shared compute budget for questions, podcasts, and video, refreshing every five hours up to a weekly cap; Google does not publish the budget figures, and when it is exhausted, offers a “Generate later” button.

Tiers. The notebook has no separate subscription; it is included as a line item in Google AI tiers. According to Google’s 07/28/2026 price list, Plus costs $4.99 per month and doubles the budget, Pro at $19.99 raises it fourfold and removes the visible watermark from images and video, while Ultra at $99.99 or $199.99 provides five or twenty times more than Pro. The main $19.99 tier has remained since April 2024; only the levels around it have changed.

Watermark. Google always adds the invisible SynthID watermark to all images and video; only Pro and Ultra remove the visible one, while it remains on Plus. For residents of India, South Korea, and Vietnam, the visible mark is forcibly restored even on paid tiers.

For business. In Google Workspace, the notebook is a separate line item: the entry plan provides three podcasts per day, while the rest provide twenty and five times more notebooks and sources. Google Cloud sells Gemini Enterprise from $21 per seat per month in the entry edition and from $30 in higher editions; the pay-as-you-go edition does not yet include the notebook.

Refund. The subscription renews automatically. If a charge fails, Google grants a seven-day grace period; you can cancel at any time, but refunds for the paid period are not available in most countries.

Three questions: whether Google trains on your files, who owns the podcasts and reports, and whom you sign the agreement with.

Training. The promise narrowed: in 2023, Google wrote that collected data never went into model training, while help as of Sep 7, 2026 says «they are not used unless you submit feedback». After you rate an answer, Google collects the prompt, sources, and response along with Gemini chats in the notebook, shows them to human reviewers after unlinking them from the account, and retains them for up to three years. The exception for Workspace work and school accounts is firm: their data is not read by people or used for training even after feedback.

Who owns the outputs. Google does not claim rights to generated content; this is stated twice in its terms. The limitation is there too: you may not share someone else's content without rights, and accounts are terminated for repeated copyright infringement. For books, Google chose the purchase route: only books bought in Google Play Books can be added to a notebook, and every notebook co-author needs their own copy.

Who can see the notebook. Until you share it, the notebook has a lock; sharing by link shows a people icon, while a public link shows a globe. In a shared notebook, only you can see your chat, and chat history can be deleted at any time. Deleted notes cannot be restored; Google states this directly in its help.

Who you contract with. Google's terms are signed by Google out of Delaware, USA, under California law with a carve-out for local laws; the Irish Google company serves EU residents only. You can use it from the age of consent in your country, while image generation, infographic styles, slide editing and cinematic video open only at 18.

Incidents. We found no leaks, regulator fines, or lawsuits specifically involving the notebook over three years, only general claims from consultants that Google's policies are insufficient for medical and European data environments. There is only one country-specific rule in the product itself: a visible watermark is forcibly applied to residents of India, South Korea, and Vietnam.