I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: NotebookLM feels like one of the most practical uses of AI ever. Even better, it doesn’t have much of a learning curve for you to wield its power, and you can quickly see how it works for you.
And here’s a great new addition to its skill set: NotebookLM users can now share their notebooks publicly (or privately) with anyone. So the next time someone asks to see your class notes, you can share your notebook with them and they can generate a study guide on the fly.
The Gemini-powered research assistant allows you to add a source like a document, pasted text or even a web page and ask specific questions about the material, and Gemini will only use information from the source itself. That’s NotebookLM at its simplest. From there, you can generate briefing docs, timelines, or even full-on podcast-like Audio Overviews based on the topic of your sources. Its power and versatility easily lend themselves to being a go-to tool for school and work.
NotebookLM stands out in a sea of AI-powered tools aimed at sourcing answers to questions from all corners of the internet. And while it’s not free from direct competition, it remains accessible and free to anyone with a Google account — and that’s a lot of people.
The news about the notebook sharing came out Tuesday, just a couple of weeks on from the Google I/O conference, where the company went all in on its latest AI developments, including what we’ll be seeing with Android XR and a new way to search.
I first heard of this feature coming through Testing Catalog in early May. Google also surfaced the upcoming Video Overviews before they were officially announced last month via a blog post. While we’re still waiting for that feature to roll out, here’s how to share a notebook on NotebookLM with anyone.
For more on AI, don’t miss 27 ways to make gen AI work for you.
Sharing a notebook in NotebookLM is very similar to sharing a document or file via Google Drive.
Since this is a Google product, sharing a notebook on NotebookLM is similar to sharing a document via Google Drive. You’ll also have a few options for controlling what a viewer has access to.
How to share a notebook with restricted access:
- From the notebook, click the Share button at the top right
- Add the person(s) you want to share it with
- Click Send
Now, if you want to make the notebook public, you can click the dropdown in the Notebook access section from Restricted Access to Anyone with link. From there, just copy the link to the notebook and share wherever you want.
At the moment, or at least not for me, sharing isn’t available for the mobile app. I also tried to share a notebook via the web to see if it would appear in the “shared” tab within the app, but it never popped up. So it looks like an update to the app or a server-side push will be required to see your shared notebooks sync between mobile and web.
Additional sharing options
Sharing a notebook via NotebookLM gives you a couple of options before you send it to someone.
There aren’t many options when sharing a notebook, but you do have access to a few tweaks.
The first option is a toggle to add a welcome note when sharing a notebook. You can add your own note if you want, otherwise a boilerplate intro will be sent. It’s a small addition, but this can be helpful for people who have never heard of or used NotebookLM before.
The second option is to restrict the viewer from accessing the full notebook, leaving access to only the chat function. Providing full access to the notebook will not allow someone to edit the content, but it will allow them to generate Audio Overviews, Mind Maps, and other NotebookLM features.
Why notebook sharing is a big deal for NotebookLM
Maybe you’ve tried out NotebookLM, but it didn’t grab you — or didn’t have the content to feed it to make it work for you. While all it takes is some mild exploration to get a grip on the tool’s capabilities, it does take a touch of tinkering. When I was first exploring it, I knew how to use NotebookLM, but I really didn’t see its usefulness until I used it in a real-world scenario for work. Only then did I really see how great a tool it is — and now I use it all the time.
Now, people can access public notebooks with multiple sources and get a sense of how the tool works without having to do any of the legwork. Moreover, this also allows someone like a teacher to build a notebook with resources for a class or even a specific test that can be shared with students for studying.
In the future, I’d love it if NotebookLM could give viewers the option to submit content for the notebook’s owner to consider as a source. This could allow a notebook to become a living document or database where you could, say, identify trends or even something like a customer feedback archive that could easily be searched through.
NotebookLM is approachable because it’s incredibly simple at its core. Its purpose is to easily surface information when you need it, and adding more complex features won’t hinder that mission.
For more, don’t miss Google’s AI vision finally came into focus at its I/O conference last month.
