NotebookLM features — the full capability list
Brief Summary
NotebookLM ships six major surfaces: audio overviews, source-grounded chat, a notes studio, multi-format source uploads, notebook sharing, and multilingual output. Each is covered below with a jump-link to the dedicated deep-dive page.
When you open the tool for the first time the interface looks deceptively simple — a source panel on the left, a chat pane on the right, and a strip of note-generation buttons in between. That spare layout conceals a surprisingly wide surface area. This page maps every significant feature, explains what it does, notes which tier it belongs to, and points you toward the longer treatment if you need it.
One framing note before the list: this research notebook is designed around a principle it calls grounding. Every generated output — a chat answer, a briefing doc, a sentence in an audio overview — is anchored to passages in the sources you uploaded, not to the model's general knowledge. That single constraint changes the character of every feature on the list below, so keep it in mind as you read.
Audio overviews
The audio overview button converts your entire notebook into a two-host podcast. The output sounds like two colleagues working through the material together — they ask each other questions, disagree gently, and circle back to the most important themes. Typical runtime is eight to eighteen minutes on the standard setting, but there is also a Brief mode (under four minutes) and a Deep Dive mode (up to forty minutes or more). A Critique mode, added during 2025, has the hosts interrogate the weakest claims in the corpus rather than simply summarising it.
You can customise tone, ask the hosts to focus on specific topics, interject mid-episode ("can you slow down on that point"), and download the finished MP3 for podcast-app sideloading or offline playback. The paid tier raises the number of overviews you can generate per day. See the audio overviews deep-dive for the full format comparison.
Source-grounded chat
The chat pane is not a general chatbot. It knows exactly one thing: the contents of your notebook's sources. Ask it a question and it retrieves the most relevant passages, composes a response, and attaches footnote-style citations you can click to verify. If two sources contradict each other, the assistant flags the discrepancy rather than choosing sides silently. If the answer is genuinely not in your sources, the tool says so rather than confabulating.
Multi-source queries work well — you can ask "what do the three PDFs I uploaded say about inflation?" and get a synthesised answer with citations from all three. Follow-up questions carry context from the previous turn, so a research conversation can run for many exchanges without the assistant losing the thread. The chat mode page covers citation mechanics and query types in detail.
Notes studio
The notes strip lets you save AI-generated outputs as persistent notes inside the notebook. The tool can generate several note types on demand: a plain summary of selected sources, a formal briefing document, a study guide with questions and answers, a timeline of events extracted from the corpus, and an FAQ drawn from what the sources cover. Each note stays editable — you can add your own text, rearrange sections, or regenerate a section with a different prompt. Notes export to Google Docs in one click or copy as Markdown. Read more on the notes studio page.
Sources and uploads
The tool accepts PDFs, Google Docs, Google Slides, plain text, Markdown files, arbitrary web URLs, YouTube video links, and raw pasted text. Audio-file ingestion and spreadsheet support have been rolling out through 2024 and 2025 — both are live for Plus subscribers and in partial rollout on the free tier. Sources can be reordered, temporarily hidden from the model, or deleted without losing saved notes. The free tier caps a notebook at fifty sources; NotebookLM Plus raises that to three hundred. The sources and uploads guide tracks format support and current size limits.
Sharing and collaboration
Every notebook has a share sheet. You can invite collaborators as viewers, commenters, or editors, or generate a public read-only link. The read-only link is popular in educational settings: a teacher shares a notebook containing the semester's reading list and students can run Q&A or listen to audio overviews without being able to alter the sources. NotebookLM Plus adds notebook-level retention policies and source-read analytics showing which collaborators have accessed which files.
Mind Map (Plus)
A visual Mind Map view was added for Plus-tier notebooks during 2025. It renders source relationships and key concepts as an interactive node graph, useful for navigating a large corpus without reading through every chat exchange. You can click a node to jump to the relevant source passage or generate a note directly from the graph view.
Multilingual output
Chat and note generation follow the language of your prompt regardless of the source language — you can upload French academic papers and ask questions in English. Audio overviews added localised voice hosts in Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Korean, and Hindi during 2025. Source ingestion has always been language-agnostic. See OECD AI policy notes on how multilingual capability affects responsible-AI evaluation frameworks.
Feature overview table
| Feature | What it does | Tier availability |
|---|---|---|
| Audio overviews | Generates a two-host podcast (Brief / Standard / Deep Dive / Critique) from your sources | Free (daily cap); Plus (higher cap) |
| Source-grounded chat | Q&A with inline citations anchored to uploaded material | Free & Plus |
| Notes studio | Save summaries, briefing docs, study guides, timelines, FAQs | Free & Plus |
| Source uploads | PDFs, Docs, Slides, URLs, YouTube, text, audio (rolling out) | Free (50 sources); Plus (300 sources) |
| Sharing | Viewer / commenter / editor roles plus read-only links | Free & Plus (Plus adds analytics) |
| Mind Map | Visual concept-relationship graph for large notebooks | Plus only |
| Multilingual output | Chat and notes in prompt language; audio hosts in 9+ languages | Free & Plus |
| MP3 export | Download audio overview as MP3 for offline or podcast-app use | Free & Plus |
| Google Docs export | Push any note directly to a new Google Doc | Free & Plus |
| Notebook-level analytics | Track which collaborators have read which sources | Plus only |
The tool's feature set has grown quickly. What launched in late 2023 as a source-grounded chat tool has become a full research workflow layer — the notebook now handles the intake (uploads), analysis (chat), output (notes), communication (sharing), and learning (audio) stages of a typical research project. The capabilities page goes deeper into how each surface works under the hood.
Common questions about NotebookLM features
Five questions that come up most often when someone starts mapping the tool's capabilities for the first time.
What are the main features of NotebookLM?
The headline features are audio overviews (podcast-style summaries of your sources), source-grounded chat (Q&A with inline citations), the notes studio (saved briefing docs, study guides, timelines), multi-format source uploads, notebook sharing with role-based access, and multilingual output. A Mind Map view for visualising source relationships is available on the paid tier.
Does NotebookLM have a Mind Map feature?
Yes — a visual Mind Map was added for Plus-tier notebooks in 2025. It shows how sources and concepts relate to each other as an interactive node graph, which is particularly useful when a notebook contains dozens of sources and you want to navigate by theme rather than by scrolling a flat list.
Which features are free and which require NotebookLM Plus?
Chat, notes, audio overviews, source uploads (up to fifty sources), sharing, and multilingual output are all available on the free tier. The Plus tier raises the source cap to three hundred, increases the daily audio-overview allowance, unlocks the Mind Map view, and adds notebook-level sharing analytics. See the pricing page for current cap figures.
Can I export anything from NotebookLM?
Yes. Notes export to Google Docs in one click or copy as Markdown. Audio overviews download as MP3 files. The chat transcript itself cannot be bulk-exported as a single file at the time of writing, but individual answers can be copied or sent to a note and then exported from there.
Does the tool work with sources in languages other than English?
Source ingestion is language-agnostic — the tool will index and retrieve from French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, or Japanese sources without any configuration change. Chat and note output follow the language of the prompt. Audio overviews added localised voice hosts for nine languages in 2025, with more in rotation.
Explore every feature hands-on
The fastest way to understand what the tool does is to create a notebook with one or two sources and try each feature in turn. The first-notebook walkthrough takes about ten minutes.
Walk through the first-notebook flowMore NotebookLM topics on this site
This features hub connects to a set of focused sub-pages. The audio overviews page covers every format mode, language option, and MP3 export step. The chat mode page explains how citations work and what happens when the assistant cannot find an answer in your sources. The notes studio page walks through every note type and both export paths. For the full format list and size limits, the sources and uploads guide is the right starting point. Anyone wanting a broader technical picture should read the capabilities deep dive, while the pricing breakdown clarifies exactly which capabilities are gated behind the paid tier.
The wider site covers the how-to-use walkthrough for people setting up their first notebook, a long-form NotebookLM guide, an in-depth review, the Gemini integration that powers the tool, and the data and privacy page for anyone evaluating the tool for sensitive research. The mobile app page covers Android and iOS, and the NotebookLM Plus page breaks down what the paid subscription actually adds to the daily workflow.