Turn NotebookLM on or off for users

As an admin, you can control who uses NotebookLM in your organization.

NotebookLM is an AI-powered research assistant designed to help you refine and organize your ideas. With NotebookLM, you can:

• Easily upload PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs, or Google Slides or discover new sources.
• Experience Gemini's advanced reasoning and interaction capabilities across different ways of communication like text, graphs, images, audio, and in many languages.
• Chat with your notebook to get grounded information based on your sources with clear in-line citations for accuracy, transparency, and trust.
• Transform your sources into approachable formats such as study guides, briefings, audio overviews, mind maps, and more.

New to NotebookLM? Find out what you can do with it. Get started with NotebookLM .

On this page...

• NotebookLM features & access by Workspace edition
• How NotebookLM stores your data
• Turn NotebookLM on or off

NotebookLM features & access by age

Updated as of November 19, 2025.

For more details on age-based access, go to Control access to Google services by age .

How NotebookLM stores your data

When users import files from Drive, NotebookLM creates a new copy of each file. This new file is stored with the user's NotebookLM data, not in their Drive. Your organization's file sharing and data region settings do not apply to data in NotebookLM.  

Turn NotebookLM on or off

1. Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.

   If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.

2. Go to Menu  Generative AI > NotebookLM .

   Requires having the Gemini Settings administrator privilege . 

3. Click  Service status.

4. To turn a service on or off for everyone in your organization, click  On for everyoneor  Off for everyone, and then click  Save.

5. (Optional) To turn a service on or off for an organizational unit:

   1. At the left, select the organizational unit.
   2. To change the Service status, select  Onor  Off.
   3. Choose one:
      • If the Service status is set to  Inherited and you want to keep the updated setting, even if the parent setting changes, click Override.
      • If the Service status is set to  Overridden, either click Inheritto revert to the same setting as its parent, or click  Saveto keep the new setting, even if the parent setting changes.
        Learn more about organizational structure .
6. (Optional) To turn on a service for a set of users across or within organizational units, select an access group. For details, go to  Customize service access using access groups .
7. Click Save.

Can't turn on NotebookLM?There might be restrictions against using that service in your area. For details, go to Unable to turn on a service .

Next steps

Get started with NotebookLM .

Related topic

Control access to Google services by age