How to Use Gemini Notebook in Gemini Chat

I have a bad habit. I have a good research chat in Gemini, and then I copy parts of it by hand into a notebook in Gemini Notebook, the tool that used to be called NotebookLM. Since last Friday you can use Gemini Notebook in Gemini chat directly, so that copy and paste step is gone.

What is new

On October 23, Google announced that Gemini Notebook is now a Connected App inside the Gemini app. You type @Gemini Notebook in a chat, or Gemini decides by itself when to use it. From the chat you can:

1. create, edit or delete a notebook
2. add, update or delete sources, including a copy of the current chat
3. list your notebooks and their sources
4. ask questions that are answered from your notebooks

It works with personal Google accounts, Workspace Individual and Workspace business accounts. Google did not mention a paid plan for it.

For readers in Germany and the rest of the EEA: it is off by default for you. Open the Gemini app, go to Settings, then Connected Apps, and switch it on. On a work account, your admin decides if you get it.

Who it helps

Students writing a thesis. You read papers in one place and think out loud in another. Now the chat where you finally understood a method can go into your thesis notebook with one sentence, next to your PDFs. Later you ask your notebook, not the open internet.

Software engineers. When I join a new service, I collect the README, ADRs, runbooks and old postmortems. A notebook is a good home for that. Now I can ask about it from the same chat where I plan the work.

How people already use notebooks

The chat link is new, but the notebooks are not. Vidit Bhargava, the developer of the LookUp dictionary app, used NotebookLM for his master's thesis to index his interviews and research and to find connections between topics. In the same post, Federico Viticci of MacStories says he uses it to search more than half a million words of his own iOS reviews. Steve Kinney, who teaches engineering courses, suggests one notebook per repo with the docs, ADRs and postmortems, and then asking for a migration checklist with citations.

How to use Gemini Notebook in Gemini chat

1. Make sure the Connected App is on (EEA users: Settings, then Connected Apps).
2. Start a normal chat about your topic.
3. When the chat is useful, save it:

@Gemini Notebook add a copy of this chat to my notebook "Thesis: survey methods". Then list all sources in that notebook.

4. A week later, ask from a fresh chat:

@Gemini Notebook what do my notebooks say about sample size for online surveys? Tell me which source each point comes from.

For engineers, paste the README and runbook into a chat, ask your questions, and then:

@Gemini Notebook create a notebook called "Payments service onboarding" and add a copy of this chat to it.

The honest caveat

Saving a chat as a source also saves its mistakes. If Gemini was wrong in that chat, your notebook now "knows" the wrong thing. Read the chat before you save it, and check the citations when you ask later. And keep company documents only in the account your company approves, not in your personal one.

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Sources

1. Google Workspace Updates: Take actions on your notebooks from Gemini Notebook directly in the Gemini app
2. Android Authority: Gemini Notebook is now a Connected App in Gemini
3. Let's Data Science: Google adds Gemini Notebook as a Connected App in Gemini chats
4. Google: NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook
5. MacStories: Doing research with NotebookLM
6. Steve Kinney: NotebookLM for AI development