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NotebookLM Has a New Name and a Few Other Changes

David Nield David Nield Freelance Writer ...

David Nield

David Nield

Freelance Writer

Experience

David Nield is a technology journalist from Manchester in the U.K. who has been writing about gadgets and apps for more than 20 years.

He has a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Durham University, where he also spent a term as editor of the award-winning student newspaper Palatinate. His journalism career started in print media, where he contributed to and edited several technology magazines and bookazines sold in the U.K. and internationally.

More recently, he has worked as a freelancer for some of the biggest technology publications on the web, covering everything from on-the-ground reporting about product launches, to detailed explainers and how-to guides on apps, gadgets, and platforms. His expertise covers broad areas of consumer tech, including smartphones, laptops, wearables, and AI.

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July 16, 2026

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NotebookLM on the web

Credit: Lifehacker

Key Takeaways

  1. NotebookLM is being rebranded as Gemini Notebook.
  2. It will still work closely with the main Gemini AI app.
  3. More features are now rolling out to Google AI Pro accounts.

Table of Contents

NotebookLM may not be the most well-known of Google's numerous AI products, but having been introduced as Project Tailwind in May 2023, it's actually been around almost as long as the Google Gemini chatbot (originally called Bard, as you might remember).

Now, perhaps in a bid to make its suite of AI tools a little less confusing, Google is renaming NotebookLM as Gemini Notebook. If you love the app in its current form, though, don't panic—not much else is changing.

"It remains a standalone product ... but it will now do more across the Google ecosystem, including inside the Gemini app and Google Search," explains Google. That "do more" will start with your notebooks appearing in AI Mode in Google Search for reference, which is rolling out soon.

Google's announcement post also mentions that users on the Pro plans ($19.99 a month) will soon be getting the upgrades rolled out last month, which were previously exclusive to Ultra plan users ($99.99 or $199.99 a month).

These upgrades include a dedicated cloud computer for each notebook you create, enabling deeper analysis of sources and the ability to write and execute code natively (via Google Antigravity). It also means more capabilities in terms of what the app can do within each of your notebooks, including creating PDFs, charts, and slideshows, and editing them through prompts.

Gemini Notebook

The new branding for Gemini Notebook. Credit: Google

Where Gemini ends and Gemini Notebook begins

You could be forgiven for getting confused about the difference between the standard Gemini AI chatbot app you find on the web and mobile, and the newly renamed Gemini Notebook—especially if you've not used the latter much.

They run on the same set of Gemini AI models, and can do a lot of the same tasks in terms of looking up information from the web and summarizing documents. When you've created notebooks inside Gemini Notebook, you can then also access them in the main Gemini app, confusing things even further.

What do you think so far?

What makes Gemini Notebook different is that it's very much a research tool. You load up a bunch of sources, from YouTube videos to PDFs, and then get Gemini Notebook to query and summarize those sources, with citations.

As we've written about before, you can turn your notes into audio podcasts and video overviews, as well as mind maps, flashcards, infographics and slideshows. Unlike the main Gemini app, though, it can't create images or videos out of a single prompt, without one or more sources to work from.

As an addendum: If you're already a seasoned NotebookLM/Gemini Notebook user, you may have missed the latest feature upgrade, rolled out to all users a couple of weeks ago. It's called Short Video Overview, and adds a shorter, vertical video format for your summary options: Click Video Overview then Short to use it.

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