Thoughts Brewing Blog

AI Quick Tips 279: Use NotebookLM notebooks as context in Gemini app

Written by Damien Griffin | Jan 24, 2026 2:45:00 PM
 

You read the title.  Did you know that you could do this?  


To be fair, you might not be able to do it. 

Google is famous for testing features on live accounts.  For example, my free Gemini account can see NotebookLM notebooks and my paid account cannot.  Seems backwards to me but what do I know…

Prefer video? Watch here:

 


It’s really easy to do so let’s start with that.

  1. Go to gemini.google.com
  2. Click on the plus on the bottom left of the prompting area
  3. Select NotebookLM
  4. Select which notebook(s) you want to use and click AddYes, you can choose more than one
  5. Verify that the notebooks that you want have been added to the prompt


At this point you can prompt like you normally would. 


The other side of this is,  what did you actually do?  If you are familiar with NotebookLM then you are probably gone already.   If not, NotebookLM is one of Google’s other AI tools that lets you create notebooks, add sources, and chat with those sources or create artifacts from them (i.e. quizzes, slide decks, infographics, etc.)


People have been requesting the option to use their NotebookLM notebooks as context for a while and it looks like Google was listening.  


Now you can choose which model you use with your notebooks, use canvas, etc.  


If you haven’t used NotebookLM yet, I recommend going to notebooklm.google.com and checking it out.  


We have a video to help you get started in less than 5 minutes.