Important:At this time, the NotebookLM mobile app may have limitations to this feature. Learn more about the supported features in the NotebookLM mobile app .
After uploading your sources, you can:
- Ask the model questions about your source material.
- Give the model instructions to perform actions.
NotebookLM uses direct quotes, text, and images straight from your sources as citations to answer your questions and perform actions. These citations help you check the accuracy of the response. You can hover over any citation to get the full quoted text right away. If you select a citation, NotebookLM automatically navigates to the location of the quote, so you can easily view it in context.
In your notebook, you can use the checkbox on each source to include or exclude certain sources the model should use to answer your question.
Tip:Chat responses in NotebookLM only use data from your sources. If you explicitly ask the model to do something more creative, like “rewrite the end of my short story,” you may receive, “NotebookLM can’t answer this question” as a chat response. Try to rephrase or ask a different question.
Chat settings in NotebookLM
To customize your chat responses:
- In the “Chat” panel, navigate to Configure Chat
.
- Select a conversational style.
- Default:Best for general purpose research and brainstorming tasks.
- Learning Guide: Best for educational content, helping you grasp new concepts and skills efficiently.
- Custom:Best for choosing a specific style ("Respond like a PhD student”) or suggesting a role ("Pretend to be a role-playing game host.").
- Select a response length.
- Default
- Longer
- Shorter
- Select Save.
Tips:
- To pin NotebookLM chat responses to the noteboard for your reference later, select Save to note.
- When you save a response as a note, the original format—including tables and clickable inline citations—gets saved.
- To clear chat history, select Refresh
Continue.
- In chat, to generate a note, select Add a note. You can also access features like Audio Overviewand Mind Mapsin chat.
