Google NotebookLM Receives Major Upgrade with Chat History and Enhanced Performance

One of my biggest NotebookLM frustrations is finally getting fixed

Google's NotebookLM is hands down my favorite AI tool. Frankly, it's also my go-to productivity companion. It's packed with genuinely useful features and stands out from every other AI app I've tried. Thanks to its source-grounded nature, it doesn't hallucinate nearly as often as most AI models do. But for all the things NotebookLM gets right (which I could write about all day), there are still a few things about the tool that bug me. Well, it seems like today's my lucky day. One thing in particular that's bugged me a lot about the app is finally getting fixed. Your NotebookLM conversations won't disappear anymore Today, Google announced a range of improvements to NotebookLM's Chat functionality via a post on Google's The Keyword blog. Among the changes (which I'll talk about later below), Google revealed that NotebookLM will now save your conversation history. This means you can now close a notebook when you're done interacting with it, and when you open it again, your previous chats will still be there, allowing you to pick up right where you left off. Now, if you aren't a frequent NotebookLM user, you might think: don't all AI tools already do that? And you'd be right. Most AI tools indeed do. But until now, NotebookLM hasn't saved any chat history at all. This meant that every time you reopened a notebook, your past conversations were gone for good. Even when you simply refreshed your browser, your entire chat would disappear. This made using NotebookLM for ongoing projects or study sessions unnecessarily frustrating. NotebookLM currently lets you share your private notebooks with others. In any such notebooks, your conversation history will only be available to you. You can also delete your chat history anytime if you'd like to start fresh. Unfortunately, conversation history isn't out just yet. In the blog post, Google mentioned that it will start rolling out to users over the next week. NotebookLM is getting some major performance upgrades Other than conversation history, Google also announced a few improvements it made that boost performance and overall response quality. The company claims that it's seen a "50% improvement in user satisfaction with responses that use larger amounts of sources" since it started testing the improvements. First up, Google has "significantly expanded NotebookLM's processing capabilities, conversation context, and history." It's now enabled the full 1 million token context of Gemini in NotebookLM chat across both free and premium plans, which the company explains improves NotebookLM's performance when analyzing large document collections significantly. The company has also increased its capacity for "multiturn conversation more than sixfold." Additionally, Google has enhanced how NotebookLM finds information from within your sources. The AI tool now explores the sources you've uploaded from multiple angles to deliver a more satisfactory response. Google also announced that the ability to customize the Chat feature is now available to all users. While all of the performance upgrades make NotebookLM more capable under the hood, I'm most excited about the conversation history feature.

You can now tell NotebookLM exactly how to behave

We've made no secret of the fact that we really like NotebookLM. It's one of Google's best AI tools right now, and we've used it for everything from sorting apartment contracts to pulling together health explainers and gaming guides. It's not perfect, but it's genuinely useful. Google's latest update introduces several more handy upgrades, including a new way to set goals that steer chat behavior. In a blog post today, Google said it's rolling out a bunch of upgrades to NotebookLM, including this new feature for chat. You can now define a goal, voice, or role for each notebook in the same way you might give ChatGPT instructions on how to respond. For example, you might tell it to act like a research advisor, a marketing strategist, or even a game master. Once set, the chatbot maintains that tone and approach throughout the entire conversation.

NotebookLM Just Got A Massive Memory Upgrade

Google is rolling out a massive upgrade to NotebookLM. You can expect a whole new level of performance, including an 8x larger context window and 6x longer conversation memory, which were probably the most glaring issues with the app. These changes are huge, especially for anyone dealing with mountains of documents. NotebookLM chat now uses the full 1 million token context window of Gemini across all plans. This is an 8x expansion in processing capability, meaning the AI can analyze massive document collections without losing its contextual understanding, which was an issue for a while. I've had plenty of cases where my question was too long, or the response would be too long, and I got shut down. In fact, the LM didn't even help; it just avoided the question and made me gut it more and more until it could give an answer. With more tokens, that won't be an issue. Google has also increased the capacity for multi-turn conversations by more than sixfold. This makes those extended research sessions much more coherent, so you can keep the conversation going across dozens of exchanges without the AI forgetting what you were talking about. I've gone about a handful of messages before needing to remind the AI of what has been said already, so this is really helpful. One thing that stood out to me is that the system now explores your source materials from multiple angles. This just means it thinks about more than your initial prompt to give a more nuanced response. To me, it sounds like it checks sources more closely, which is great because you need that trustworthiness. A glaring issue was that whenever you leave your Notebook, even if it's to go and look at a different one, your chat history would be wiped. You can save it as notes, but that's not worth filling up your source limits. Luckily, now, your conversation history will be automatically saved to support long-term projects. So you can close a session and pick it up later without losing your chat logs. You can delete your history anytime with that refresh button on top, but keep in mind your chat is only visible to you in shared notebooks. This part will roll out throughout the week. A real game-changer for many users will be the new ability to personalize your chat with goals, roles, and voices. This makes NotebookLM less of a generic research partner and more of whatever you need. This could be anything from a rigorous professor to a storyteller helping you find new ideas. You just click the configuration icon and write how you want your chat to behave. I absolutely love NotebookLM and even pay for the subscription to do more with it. My biggest concern was that the app didn't get much token space from Google, which made it less informative and helpful than it could have been. While there are plenty of awesome features, it's clear that it had limitations when it couldn't answer questions or forgot what was in the sources. With these upgrades, it should be a lot more helpful, and I'm excited to see what I can do with it. Source: NotebookLM

NotebookLM can now be your personalized PhD advisor, marketing strategist, and more

Google's flagship learning tool just got a little bit better. NotebookLM is clearly important to Google's AI strategy, and that is evident thanks to the breakneck pace at which the tool gains new features. For reference, the tool's standout Audio Overviews feature gained video support back in late July, followed by new voices and tones for the feature in September. Now, Google is rolling out more changes -- changes meant to make NotebookLM fundamentally smarter and more powerful. For starters, the tool just received back-end improvements that should boost performance, quality, and the tool's overall contextual understanding. This was done by bringing Gemini's full one million token context window into NotebookLM's chat. This applies to all plans, and, according to Google, improves the tool's performance by allowing it to analyze large document collections at once. "Plus, we've increased our capacity for multiturn conversation more than sixfold, so you can get more coherent and relevant results over extended interactions," wrote the tech giant. Elsewhere, the tech giant has also reportedly "enhanced how NotebookLM finds information in your sources." NotebookLM will now start exploring your sources from multiple angles, essentially going beyond your initial prompt to form a nuanced response. Additionally, your NotebookLM conversations will now be automatically saved. Users can now close a session at any time and resume it later without losing their conversation history. Chat history can be deleted at any time, plus your own chat history within shared notebooks will only be visible to you. These changes will start rolling out to users over the next week. Lastly, and most importantly, NotebookLM users should now be able to personalize their chats with specific goals. This can include telling the tool to adopt a specific goal, voice, or role, "ranging from a PhD student analyzing sources to a creative storyteller exploring ideas." Need some inspiration? The tech giant shared examples of prompts you might want to try out: Treat me like a PhD candidate: This will make sure that the tool rigorously challenges every assumption and forces the user to defend their work. Act as a lead marketing strategist: This makes sure that the tool provides an immediate action plan, and that its responses are analytical and direct. Analyze the provided material from three distinct perspectives: This prompt ensures that the tool analyzes information from different angles, including angles like strict academic, a creative strategist, and a skeptical reviewer.' Act as a Game Master for a text-based simulation: This will prompt NotebookLM to "present a high-stakes scenario with a specific goal and a step limit (e.g., 10). I make all the choices. Narrate the outcomes vividly, using realistic, scenario-relevant details."