NotebookLM
Ask questions of your own documents in NotebookLM and check the citations
A research notebook that answers from sources you add, with in-line citations. Good for making sense of a small, known set of reading material.
Written from the tool's official pages, listed under Official sources at the end of this guide. Check them for current features, limits and terms.
Try it (opens in a new tab)Steps to try
- Choose three to five sources you are allowed to use, such as PDFs, web pages or Google Docs, all about one topic.
- Sign in with a Google account you manage; for a work or school account, check that your admin has turned the product on.
- Create a notebook and add the sources, then wait until they are listed before asking anything.
- Ask narrow questions, such as what each source says about one term, rather than broad ones. Rephrase if the answer looks thin.
- Open the in-line citations and confirm each claim against the original passage before you copy anything out.
- Use the summary or study-guide style outputs the help pages describe only after the questions look right, and edit the result yourself.
Limitations
Answers are meant to come from your sources, so it will not help if the information is not in them. Sensitive wording can trigger safety flags, and the help page says it can make mistakes. Check names, figures and quotes by hand. Availability depends on country, age and account type.
Pricing
The help page describes usage limits and says to see its separate limits page. Plans and free access can change, so check the official pages for what applies to your account.
Privacy and data
Do not upload copyrighted or confidential material you lack rights to use. The help page says data is not used to train the product unless you give feedback, and that feedback can expose the interaction to review. Work or school accounts follow the organisation's terms; read them first.
About the sources
Based on the official help page, not hands-on testing. That page now uses the name Gemini Notebook; this guide keeps NotebookLM as the listed product name.
Alternatives
A general chat assistant or Perplexity suits open web questions. For a handful of documents, plain search inside the files is a free first check.
Official sources
The official pages this guide was written from. Read them for current features, limits and terms.