Gemini Notebooks: how to use them, now from any Gemini chat

What Gemini Notebooks are

A notebook is a workspace for one thing: a trip, an exam, a business plan. You give it sources, like PDFs, Google Docs, web links, pasted text or Markdown files, and every chat inside it starts out knowing them. You can also give it instructions, such as "answer in short bullet points", and it keeps them.

Each notebook also lives in Gemini Notebook, the app that used to be NotebookLM. Add a source in one and it shows up in the other. The difference is in the answers. Gemini Notebook answers only from your sources and can make audio and video overviews of them. Gemini can mix your sources with web search and its other tools.

How to make a notebook

1. Open the menu and choose New notebookIt's under Notebooks, on gemini.google.com or in the Gemini app for iPhone and Android.
2. Give it a name and a first promptThe name is how you'll find it later, so make it plain: "Kitchen remodel", not "Project 3".
3. Add sourcesUpload files, pick them from Google Drive, or paste links and text. A notebook can't use another notebook as a source.
4. Bring in old chatsOpen the menu, choose Search chats, then More next to a chat, and Add to notebook.

Saving chats, Drive files and notebook memory need Keep Activity turned on in your Gemini settings. Without it you can still chat with a notebook, but those chats aren't saved and it won't build a memory of them.

Use @Gemini Notebook from any chat

This is the new part. You no longer have to open a notebook first. In any chat, type @Gemini Notebook and ask, and Gemini works on your notebooks for you. It also reaches for them on its own when a question fits. Google's examples:

• "Create a Gemini Notebook about solar farm market trends."
• "Add a copy of this chat to my notebook about Bio 101 course."
• "Show me a list of all the sources in my notebook about US National Parks."
• "What do my Gemini Notebooks say about butterfly migration?"

It works on the Gemini website and the phone apps, and it's rolling out gradually. The Gemini app for Mac has notebooks but not this yet. To switch it off, or on in the EEA, go to Settings, then Connected Apps. Google says what you put in Gemini Notebook isn't used to train its models unless you send feedback.

Bring your own notes in

A notebook is only as good as what you put in it, and a lot of what you know about a project is probably in your notes app. Notebooks take Markdown files, so in Apple Notes on a Mac choose File, then Export as, then Markdown, and add the file as a source. (More in how to export Apple Notes to Markdown.)

The catch is that it's a copy, so when the note changes, the notebook doesn't. I make Pinto Notes, a notes app for Mac that Claude can read and edit directly once you allow it, so there's no copy to keep up to date. It doesn't work with Gemini, so for a Gemini notebook, the export is the way.

Questions

Checked against the app on 24 October 2026.