NotebookLM
Hacker ApprovedAI research assistant in AI tools
People like it for summarizing and studying their own documents, with citations, fewer hallucinations and audio podcast overviews; critics find the podcast banter repetitive and the source-only focus limiting.
People like it for summarizing and studying their own documents, with citations, fewer hallucinations and audio podcast overviews; critics find the podcast banter repetitive and the source-only focus limiting.
147 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 107
- criticize it
- 40
- approval share
- 73%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 107 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Audio podcast overviews
“The damned podcast presented the material in a way that helped explained the topic more than my article did.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you retain what you learn from podcasts?” “I fed my core curated lessons into NotebookLM to generate supplemental podcasts, slides, and flashcards”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Swalpa – Spoken Kannada learning platform built with Antigravity” “I'm actually pretty astonished by it's audio overviews and the insights/summaries it's able to do”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “AI's real superpower: consuming, not creating” - Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook”
- Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Three kinds of AI products work”
- Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you retain what you learn from podcasts?”
Summarizes and synthesizes documents
“The pro tip is pasting such long ToS into NotebookLM and asking it to list e.g. top 5 surprising clauses”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use may imply consent [pdf]” “it was good for synthesizing multiple documents in a way chatgpt or google's ai overview couldn't”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook” “It not only gave me the fallacies in their reasoning, but also an excellent counter argument”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “The Dead Economy Theory” - Comment from 24 Jul 2026 in “Claude Opus 5”
- Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Grok 4.5”
- Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Sezwhere – Ask any document "where does it say that?" (built on Jev)”
Grounded in your sources
“It generally will work strictly with only the uploaded doc and not pull in extraneous or even related material.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Ask HN: Why do people hate using AI so much?” “relies 100% on the sources you provide, such as PDFs, audio files, YouTube videos, Google Docs”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “NotebookLM: The AI that only learns from you” “notebook LM is still much much better at not hallucinating compared to claude and chatgpt”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook” - Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “India's top court angry after junior judge cites fake AI-generated orders”
Helps learning new topics
“I used it most key to learn about history. There isn't much damage if it got 1600s or 1700s detail wrong.”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “OpenAI set to discontinue Sora video platform” “I fed my core curated lessons into NotebookLM to generate supplemental podcasts, slides, and flashcards”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Swalpa – Spoken Kannada learning platform built with Antigravity” “I'd basically take the slides and throw them into NotebookLM and get way better lectures”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes” - Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook”
- Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Fighting Fire with Fire: Scalable Oral Exams”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Podcast banter annoying, repetitive
“NotebookLM/Gemini Notebook sorta does this, but the two-person podcast format is kind of annoying and it can't pronounce math.”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook” “I hate sitting through the patter of how "we're not political, just reporting the views of the sources."”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook” “One minor thing that I find annoying is that the narrators switch roles in the middle of conversation.”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “OpenAI set to discontinue Sora video platform” - Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “The 100k Whys of AI”
- Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “OpenAI set to discontinue Sora video platform”
Limited to uploaded sources
“you had to give it URLs or docs, you couldn't just have it search for docs and then incorporate them into your research”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook” “It generally will work strictly with only the uploaded doc and not pull in extraneous or even related material.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Ask HN: Why do people hate using AI so much?” “notebooklm is insular and doesnt have the research and imaging features of gemini”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Skills for organizations, partners, the ecosystem” - Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “GPT-5.2”
Oversimplifies or misses key points
“it illustrates the obvious, easy to understand things in the brief, and misses (or oversimplifies) most of the hard technical parts”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Can LLMs Perform Deep Technical Comprehension of Computer Architecture Papers” “Otherwise you may very well be missing anything really surprising or novel.”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “OpenAI set to discontinue Sora video platform”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NotebookLMThis page | 107 | 40 | 73% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Gemini Notebook | 8 | 6 | 57% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 166 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“you can probably upload documents to LMNotebook and punch in a question”
“NotebookLM is way more popular in the real world than anthropic work or crap like that.”
“Now, we have an incredible amount of information & tech at our fingertips: LLMs, Google NotebookLM, online tutors”
“For anyone wanting a faster overview, I used NotebookLM to create a brief video summary”
“I like the podcast features still for getting an overview or orientation on a new topic”
“it was good for synthesizing multiple documents in a way chatgpt or google's ai overview couldn't”
“notebook LM is still much much better at not hallucinating compared to claude and chatgpt”
“I hate sitting through the patter of how "we're not political, just reporting the views of the sources."”
“you had to give it URLs or docs, you couldn't just have it search for docs and then incorporate them into your research”
“NotebookLM/Gemini Notebook sorta does this, but the two-person podcast format is kind of annoying and it can't pronounce math.”
“it illustrates the obvious, easy to understand things in the brief, and misses (or oversimplifies) most of the hard technical parts”
“NotebookLM is a killer product for e.g. collecting and summarizing new laws”
“after 50 of them, I can predict what the host will "pushback" on and exactly when”
“I'd basically take the slides and throw them into NotebookLM and get way better lectures”
“It not only gave me the fallacies in their reasoning, but also an excellent counter argument”
“It generally will work strictly with only the uploaded doc and not pull in extraneous or even related material.”
“NotebookLM's inline numbered references can now be automatically converted into proper academic citations”
“The damned podcast presented the material in a way that helped explained the topic more than my article did.”
“when notebooklm came out with their pod cast feature I was in heaven”
“Or give the video to notebooklm - you can also get the trasncript (unformatted) using this technique”
“Throw the video into notebooklm - it gives transcripts of all youtube videos (AFAIK)”
“I used it most key to learn about history. There isn't much damage if it got 1600s or 1700s detail wrong.”
“Otherwise you may very well be missing anything really surprising or novel.”
“The bantering of the podcast I found distracting and the breathless enthusiasm.”
“One minor thing that I find annoying is that the narrators switch roles in the middle of conversation.”
“The NotebookLM project can be used for any future maintainers to ask questions about the project based on all of the artifacts.”
“The pro tip is pasting such long ToS into NotebookLM and asking it to list e.g. top 5 surprising clauses”
“the right tools are grounded Ai solutions like nouswise and notebooklm”
“I fed my core curated lessons into NotebookLM to generate supplemental podcasts, slides, and flashcards”
“they have the full suite of tools I want from general LLM chat, to notebookLM, to antigravity”
“Which for the positions/roles involved does make some sense (drafting documents/research).”
“relies 100% on the sources you provide, such as PDFs, audio files, YouTube videos, Google Docs”
“The NotebookLM version gives citations with links to the original text to support all these assertions”
“throw any conversation into notebooklm and deep thinking mode to go in depth”
“NotebooksLM does come up with decent quizzes, but nothing super hard.”
“notebooklm is insular and doesnt have the research and imaging features of gemini”
“LLMs handle the rest well: presenting info in different ways and paces, interacting with the learner like a tutor”
“I'm actually pretty astonished by it's audio overviews and the insights/summaries it's able to do”
“heavily biased to only use the sources i added and frame every task around them”
“astonished and delighted by NotebookLM, mostly because of the audio overviews”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.