Gemini Notebook
Google's AI research assistant, renamed from NotebookLM in July 2026. It answers only from the sources you upload, citing each claim in line, and turns them into audio overviews, videos, mind maps, quizzes and slides.
What is Gemini Notebook?
Gemini Notebook is Google's AI research assistant, and it is built on one deliberate restriction: it answers from the sources you give it, not from the open web. You create a notebook, add material to it — PDFs, web pages, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs, Google Slides — and then question that material in a chat. Every answer carries in-line citations pointing back to the passage it came from, which is what makes the tool usable for work where provenance matters.
Around that core sits an unusually wide range of output formats. A notebook can turn your sources into study guides and briefings, mind maps, flashcards and quizzes, infographics you export as PNG, slide decks and written reports. Its best-known format is the Audio Overview: a podcast-style discussion between two AI hosts that you can interrupt to ask a question or steer elsewhere. Video Overviews do the same in moving images, with Cinematic Video Overviews reserved for the top tiers.
Since July 2026 every notebook also gets a secure cloud computer. That lets the tool write and run code natively, so data analysis stays grounded in the documents you supplied rather than in a model's recollection. Google shipped this to AI Ultra subscribers and to Workspace customers with AI Ultra or AI Expanded Access first, then began rolling it out to all Pro users on the web.
The product's history explains its name. It launched as Project Tailwind at Google I/O 2023, became NotebookLM, and was renamed Gemini Notebook on 16 July 2026. It remains a standalone product, but it now syncs with the Gemini app, and Google says notebooks are coming to AI Mode in Search. The company claims more than 30 million users and over 600,000 organisations.
You reach it in a browser at notebooklm.google, or through apps for iOS 17 and Android 10 and later, where Audio Overviews play offline and in the background. Output is available in 80 languages and browser access covers almost every country. A permanent free tier exists; higher limits arrive through Google AI, Workspace or Google Cloud plans.
What it does
- Ask questions about your own documents and get answers with in-line citations
- Turn a set of sources into a podcast-style Audio Overview hosted by two AI voices
- Generate Video Overviews, mind maps, infographics and slide decks from the same material
- Create flashcards and quizzes to revise from your own reading
- Run code in a secure cloud computer to analyse data grounded in your sources
- Write and organise notes alongside the sources they came from
- Discover new sources from inside the notebook
When to use Gemini Notebook / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Gemini Notebook is the right fit.
When to use Gemini Notebook
- Students and teachers turning course material into study guides, quizzes and audio recaps
- Researchers and doctoral candidates working through large document corpora
- Journalists, fact-checkers and archivists who need every claim traced back to a source
- Lawyers and paralegals synthesising case files, contracts and disclosure bundles
- Consultants, analysts and product managers digesting dense internal documentation
When not to use Gemini Notebook
- Teams that need an API to industrialise document processing, as none is published
- Buyers who require a visible DPA, a subprocessor list or a documented hosting region before signing
- Anyone who wants a published, predictable price without subscribing to a Google AI plan
- Users looking for open-web search, since answers come only from the sources you supply
- Mobile users who need to export Audio Overviews as files rather than play them offline
How to use Gemini Notebook
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Open notebooklm.google in a browser, or install the app from the App Store or Google Play
- Sign in with a Google account — a free Gmail address is enough for the Standard tier
- Verify your age in your Google Account, which the product requires before granting access
- Create a notebook for the topic, case or course you are working on
- Add sources: upload PDFs, paste web pages, link YouTube videos, add audio files, Google Docs or Google Slides
- Or let the notebook discover new sources for you instead of hunting for them yourself
- Chat with the notebook, and click the in-line citations to check each answer against its source
- Write notes alongside the sources as your thinking develops
- Generate an output format: Audio or Video Overview, mind map, flashcards, quiz, infographic, slide deck or report
- Set the output language in the settings, choosing from the 80 available
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Answers are confined to the sources you supply and cited in line, so verification is part of the product rather than bolted on afterwards
- The permanent free tier is genuinely usable: 100 notebooks, 50 sources each, 50 chats a day, three audio and three video overviews daily
- An unusually wide range of output formats for one tool, from podcast-style audio to slide decks and runnable code
- 80 output languages, with browser availability across almost every country and territory
- Native iOS and Android apps, including offline and background listening
- Google states that notebook content is not used to directly train its foundational models by default
- Heavily adopted and well rated: over 10 million Play downloads, 4.8 out of 5 across 292,000 reviews, 30 million users claimed
Cons
- No price is readable without JavaScript and amounts vary by country, so the entry cost cannot be stated from a first-party page
- There is no standalone subscription: upgrading means buying a Google AI, Workspace or Google Cloud plan
- No public API is documented for the consumer product
- The product publishes no legal pages of its own, and the contract that binds you changes with your account type
- No DPA, no subprocessor list and no hosting country or region is published anywhere
- Cinematic Video Overviews and code execution are reserved for the higher tiers
- The July 2026 rename left the domain, the app identifiers and the App Store URL still carrying the NotebookLM name
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free tier is available at no cost with a Gmail account. Beyond it, Gemini Notebook has no standalone subscription: higher limits are obtained through a Google AI Plus, Google AI Pro or Google AI Ultra plan, through a qualifying Google Workspace or Workspace for Education licence, or through Google Cloud for the enterprise variant. No monetary amount could be recorded from a first-party source, because Google renders subscription prices client-side and varies them by country. The entry price is therefore not stated here, and prospective buyers should check the amount applicable in their own market.
- 100 notebooks
- 50 sources per notebook
- 50 chats per day
- 3 Audio Overviews and 3 Video Overviews per day
- 10 reports per day
- 200 notebooks
- 100 sources per notebook
- 200 chats per day
- 6 Audio Overviews and 6 Video Overviews per day
- 20 reports per day
- 500 notebooks
- 300 sources per notebook
- 500 chats per day
- 20 Audio Overviews and 20 Video Overviews per day
- 2 Cinematic Video Overviews per day
- 100 reports per day
- 500 notebooks
- 500 sources per notebook
- 2
- 500 chats per day
- 100 Audio Overviews and 100 Video Overviews per day
- 10 Cinematic Video Overviews per day
- 500 reports per day
- 500 notebooks
- 600 sources per notebook
- 5
- 000 chats per day
- 200 Audio Overviews and 200 Video Overviews per day
- 20 Cinematic Video Overviews per day
- Gemini Notebook Enterprise — through Google Cloud
- arranged with the Google Cloud sales team
- Google declares all of these usage limits subject to change
- and none of the tiers carries a publicly readable price
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Gemini Notebook handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no mention of the GDPR anywhere: not on the product pages, not in the help centre, and not in the Google Privacy Policy retrieved for this review. Across seventeen collected documents the term does not appear once. That is silence rather than a denial, and it is why the compliance flag reads N. The framework that does apply is Google's generic one. For users in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, the controller and contracting party is Google Ireland Limited (registration 368047), Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4. The privacy policy sets out legal bases of processing, and the EEA terms grant a withdrawal right exercisable at account-withdrawal@google.com. No Article 27 representative, no named data protection officer, no dedicated privacy contact, no DPA and no subprocessor list are published for this product.
Who owns the data?
Google does not claim ownership of the original content you generate in Gemini Notebook, and the help centre says so explicitly. You remain responsible for the copyright status of everything you upload, and repeated infringement of intellectual property rights leads to account termination. Which contract governs you depends on your account: consumer accounts fall under the Google Terms of Service, qualifying work accounts under the Google Cloud Terms of Service, school accounts under the Google Workspace for Education Terms, and access through Google Cloud under the Google Cloud Platform/SecOps Terms. The product publishes no legal pages of its own, so every ownership question is answered by Google's general terms rather than by a product-specific document.
Reuse rights
Gemini Notebook uses the files you add, the outputs you generate and your chat history to build your knowledge base and assist your research. Google states that notebook content is not used to directly train its foundational AI models, unless you choose to provide feedback. Submitting thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback pulls the associated content with it: prompts, customisations, sources, uploads and generated outputs such as chats, audio overviews, video overviews, reports and mind maps. It also sweeps in any Gemini chats sitting in the notebook context, even when Gemini Apps Activity is switched off. That material is reviewed by specially trained human teams after being disconnected from your Google Account, and Google uses it to provide, improve and develop its products, services and machine-learning technologies. Workspace and Workspace for Education users are exempt: their uploads, queries and model responses are never human-reviewed, even when feedback is sent, and are never used to train AI models. Data shared with other Google services, such as the Gemini app, is handled under the Google Privacy Policy and any service-specific notices.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
No hosting country or region is published for Gemini Notebook. Neither the product's help centre nor the Google Privacy Policy retrieved for this review names a data centre location, a storage jurisdiction or a regional residency option. What is documented is the controller: for users in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, services are provided by and contracted with Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland; elsewhere the contracting entity is Google LLC in Mountain View, California. The Google Play listing declares that data is encrypted in transit, that nothing is shared with third parties, and that users can request deletion. The domain resolves to Google's own network through an anycast address, which says nothing reliable about where content actually rests. Organisations with data residency requirements will not find an answer on the published pages and should raise the question through Workspace or Google Cloud support before committing.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Gemini Notebook.
- Sending thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback takes your notebook content out of the no-training perimeter: it triggers review by human teams and up to three years of retention
- That same feedback pathway sweeps in Gemini conversations held in the notebook context, even when Gemini Apps Activity is switched off
- The product has no legal pages of its own and the contract binding you changes with your account type, so check which one applies before uploading anything sensitive
- No price is visible without JavaScript and amounts vary by country, so confirm the cost in your own market before committing
- The GDPR is never named, and no DPA, subprocessor list or hosting country is published for this product
- Answers confined to your own sources feel authoritative, which is a trap when the sources themselves are partial, dated or wrong: a citation proves provenance, not truth
- Letting the tool summarise, quiz and explain your own reading is convenient enough to replace the reading, and the effort you skip is the part that builds understanding
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Negligible. Gemini Notebook is hosted by Google and runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install, deploy or configure. You need a Google account, and a free Gmail address is enough; you must also verify your age in that account before access is granted. The mobile apps install from the App Store on iOS 17 and later, or Google Play on Android 10 and later. Even code execution runs inside a managed cloud environment with no setup on your side, and changing the output language is a single settings toggle.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Gemini Notebook
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Is this still NotebookLM?
Is there a free version?
What does the paid version cost?
Where do the answers come from?
What kinds of sources can I add?
Is my content used to train Google's models?
Are there mobile apps?
Is there an API?
Which languages does it support?
Who do I contact for support?
Should you pick Gemini Notebook?
Gemini Notebook is a mature product with an unusually clear idea of what it is for. By confining answers to the sources you supply and citing them in line, it makes verification part of the workflow instead of an afterthought, and that single design choice is why it has found an audience of students, researchers, journalists and analysts rather than remaining a curiosity. The breadth of output formats, from podcast-style audio to slide decks and runnable code, is rare in one tool, and the free tier is generous enough to be genuinely useful rather than a teaser.
The reservations concern transparency rather than capability. Nothing on Google's own pages tells you what an upgrade costs: prices are injected by JavaScript and vary by country, and there is no standalone subscription, so you buy a Google AI, Workspace or Google Cloud plan and the notebook comes with it. The product publishes no legal pages of its own, which means the contract governing your use shifts with your account type. The GDPR is never named in any page collected for this review, and no DPA, subprocessor list or hosting location is published. None of that makes the product careless; it does mean a buyer with compliance obligations will have to ask questions the public pages do not answer.
One nuance deserves attention: Google states notebook content is not used to train its foundational models, but sending feedback opts that content into human review and up to three years of retention, including any Gemini conversations held in the notebook context.
For individual research and learning this is among the strongest tools available, and it costs nothing to try. For regulated or contractual use, treat the published documentation as a starting point and take the remaining questions to Google's sales or support channels.
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