Google's NotebookLM Transforms Learning with New Flashcards and Quiz Features

Upgrade your study game with NotebookLM - here's how

Finals are approaching - let NotebookLM's new flash card and quiz upgrades help. Google's NotebookLM is one of our favorite AI tools for productivity, and it just got several upgrades just in time for finals season. Users can now create flashcards and quizzes with the NotebookLM app, which also now has a four-fold larger context window and six-fold longer conversation memory. Also: I used NotebookLM for an entire month - here's why it really is a game changer According to Google, the most significant update to NotebookLM this week is the addition of flashcards and quizzes to further your learning on the go. Google says the new feature can help users memorize key terms, dates, and concepts by pulling from their uploaded sources. Also: You can now give NotebookLM more instructions - here's why that's a game changer Users can use flashcards to test their knowledge and challenge themselves with quizzes, as well as customize topics, difficulty, and the number of cards within the flashcard deck. They can temporarily add or remove sources within NotebookLM while using the chat or Studio tabs, ensuring responses are based on relevant sources. NotebookLM's chat improvements allow users to customize chat to achieve a specific goal or adopt a unique voice or role. For example, users can direct chat to act as a scrutinizing professor or analyze their provided sources from multiple perspectives. Still, AI tools often hallucinate; especially when using them for schoolwork, be sure to verify any claims or examples NotebookLM and similar products make before incorporating them further into an assignment or study prep. Users can access NotebookLM's upgrades in the app for iOS and Android. To find the new features, you'll need to update your app to the latest version. NotebookLM's free tier allows for 10 sets of flashcards daily.

4 things NotebookLM still does better than any other tool

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: there's no company doing AI better than Google. Sure, the company might make questionable decisions here and there. But when it comes to building tools that actually make your life easier and aren't simply a slightly tweaked version of what others are doing, they're in a league of their own. And there's no better example of this than NotebookLM. I've tried to find competitors that stack up to it, and while they certainly do come close in specific areas, none of them are good enough to replace the tool. Don't believe me? Here are just a couple of things NotebookLM still does way better than any other AI there is. Responses grounded in sources you upload Everything backed by your own materials Similar to most, the very first AI tool I tried was ChatGPT. While it was impressive, it came at a cost of accuracy and context. Since I'm a student right now, my primary use case for AI is studying, mostly to reinforce content I've already studied in class but want to understand at a deeper level or clarify questions. Before I tried NotebookLM, I'd have my lecture slides open in one tab and an AI chatbot like ChatGPT in another. I would then ask the chatbot questions or doubts I had, and a lot of times, the answers were inaccurate and didn't fully align with the context of my question. Despite it being over two years since ChatGPT was launched and the actual AI boom began, hallucinations are still a major, if not the biggest, problem with most AI tools. With Google's NotebookLM, hallucinations aren't as big of an issue. This is because NotebookLM is a source-grounded tool, which essentially means the AI is only familiar with the sources you upload or the information you explicitly share with it via Chat. Each notebook stays separate, so the context of one doesn't bleed into another. Ultimately, this puts more emphasis on the sources you upload. What you upload really determines the quality of the AI's answers. The higher the quality of your sources, the more context-aware and accurate the AI's responses will be. If your sources conflict with each other, the chances of hallucinations or inconsistent answers increase, so it's important to curate your notebooks carefully. When NotebookLM isn't sure, it tells you A honest AI tool When you ask NotebookLM a question, each claim will always have a citation next to it, and clicking it will take you right to where the information appears in your uploaded source. One thing you might've noticed with most AI chatbots is they always try to respond to you, even when they aren't sure or don't have enough information. NotebookLM handles this differently. It won't just guess. If the answer isn't clearly in your sources, it will let you know rather than generating potentially inaccurate information. Sometimes, if the answer is buried in your sources and mentioned indirectly, the tool will clearly let you know that it inferred the answer rather than finding it explicitly, so you're always aware of how confident the AI is in its response. NotebookLM lets you customize almost everything More control than ever While customization options were quite limited up until a few months ago, the recent updates to NotebookLM have focused on giving users more control. For instance, NotebookLM's most well-known feature is Audio Overviews, which lets you generate podcast-style discussions of your sources. I've been using this feature to study and generate podcasts to listen to while on walks since it was first announced, and if you listen to them as much as I do, you start to notice patterns in how the hosts speak. NotebookLM tackles this by giving you the option to generate different styles of these overviews, like Debate, Critique, and Brief, and you even get the option to add a custom prompt to create an overview that's uniquely yours. Similarly, NotebookLM has a relatively new Quizzes feature, which I've been using a lot for college. But here's the thing: when I upload so many sources, I don't necessarily want to be quizzed on every single detail. Thankfully, NotebookLM lets you add a custom prompt here as well, so you can specify exactly what you'd like the quiz to focus on. Here's my personal favorite -- you can even customize how NotebookLM responds when you ask questions in the Chat panel. I've turned it into a brainrot tutor with this feature, a fitness coach, a super angry professor (to push me into studying), and more. The level of personalization you get with NotebookLM is simply insane, and as someone who likes to customize every aspect of my workflow, it feels like the AI is truly bending to my needs rather than forcing me to adapt to it. The features it introduces are truly unique Features designed to actually make a difference The best part about NotebookLM is that it doesn't follow the trend of adding features every other tool adds just for the sake of it. All the features it introduces are clearly well-thought-out and genuinely applicable in your daily workflow. They come directly from real pain points, which is exactly why they're so impactful. In fact, NotebookLM was created to tackle the problem of information overload and help users quickly find, organize, and make sense of all their notes without wasting time digging through endless documents. For instance, NotebookLM was the first tool to launch an Audio Overview feature, designed because the team recognized that people learn best through audio rather than text. Quizzes, flashcards, Mind Maps, and even Video Overviews are all examples of features the average user would reach for. So far, there hasn't been a single NotebookLM feature I haven't used again after testing it for the first time. Simply the best AI tool there is Sure, NotebookLM still has some quirks it needs to work on. However, these are minor compared to the overall functionality and usefulness of the tool. It's the most well-rounded AI tool out there currently, and it continues to get better with each update.

NotebookLM can now test your knowledge with flashcards and quizzes

NotebookLM, the one AI tool from Google everyone loves, is about to become more useful for studying. Google has begun rolling out an update that allows people to use the app to create flashcards and personalized quizzes. When you use NotebookLM in this way, you'll be able to set the difficulty of the material, as well as the number of questions or cards the app presents to you. It's also possible to select the sources you want the software to pull from by navigating to the Studio tab, meaning you can focus on what matters to you. With today's update, Google is also promising significant improvements to the app's ability to chat on mobile. Thanks to its latest Gemini models, the company says NotebookLM now has a four times larger context window than before and six times longer conversation memory. Overall, chat quality should be about 50 percent better too. If you want to give NotebookLM a try for yourself, download it from the App Store or Google Play.

NotebookLM gets flashcards and quizzes to put your knowledge to the test

Chatting on mobile has also been improved with better quality, a larger context window, and longer conversation memory. NotebookLM is one of the best AI tools Google has to offer, especially for learning. It takes all of the information crammed in your notebook and summarizes the contents to help you grasp key concepts quickly. And since it only uses the sources you provide, the chance of it hallucinating is lower than that of other AI tools. Google has begun rolling out an update that should make NotebookLM even more helpful for your studying needs.

I tried Google's NotebookLM update -- and it actually helped me remember what I read

When I first tried NotebookLM, Google's experimental note-taking assistant powered by Gemini, I loved the idea but rarely used it. I've been out of school for a while and although I thought the idea was nice, I didn't think it was completely for me. Sure, it could summarize my documents and highlight key takeaways, which I frequently use, but that wasn't enough to hook me. Frankly, other popular chatbots can do the same thing, so I moved along. Fast-forward to now -- Google just added flashcards and quiz capabilities, and suddenly this tool has real staying power. The update means NotebookLM no longer just summarizes what you upload, it tests you on it. Whether you're a student, a writer juggling research (hi, it's me) or just someone trying to make sense of the constant information firehose, this update makes NotebookLM a game changer for just about anyone. It's turning into my own personal study coach. With the new update, you can upload any document such as a PDF, transcript or even a messy set of notes, and NotebookLM automatically generates: You can also now choose which sources NotebookLM pulls from. That means if you've uploaded ten articles, you can focus your quiz or flashcards on just one or two. It's a small detail, but it makes the app feel focused in a way most AI tools don't. And it's available right now on web, Android and iOS. For my experiment, I uploaded a long, slightly chaotic research doc I've been building with notes on AI automation for schools. Normally, I'd have to reread the whole thing to refresh my memory. Instead, NotebookLM spit out 30 flashcards in seconds. There was everything from model comparisons to key takeaways about multimodality. These are all things I need to know inside and out for an upcoming podcast I'm guesting on. Then I tried a 10-question quiz. The results weren't perfect, but most of the questions were surprisingly relevant; I felt like it had skimmed my brain. It even included one trick question I almost got wrong. Touché, Google. That was the turning point for me. I realized that this tool isn't just for students cramming for finals. It's a thinking aid for professionals like me. It's given the ability to retain more of what I'm learning. NotebookLM is a useful way to recall information you already know but might have forgotten. Flashcards and quizzes might sound like back-to-school tools, but they tap into one of the strongest principles in learning science -- retrieval practice. The act of recalling information strengthens memory far more than rereading. NotebookLM automates that process, removing the friction of building the cards yourself. It also plays into a broader trend: AI as a personalized tutor. We've seen ChatGPT and Claude add study modes, but Google has an edge here. NotebookLM connects directly to your actual content -- your documents, your research, your work. For people drowning in PDFs, academic papers or meeting notes, this is a quiet revolution. Like all AI tools, NotebookLM isn't flawless. Sometimes the flashcards are too simplistic or the quiz questions are slightly off. You'll still want to review and edit what it generates, but that's part of the learning process, at least for me. NotebookLM also works best with clean, text-heavy documents. Uploading scanned images or messy notes might lead to odd phrasing or missing details. And while it's rolling out widely, not all regions have feature parity yet. Still, the update feels meaningfully useful. After years of testing every AI tool under the sun, it takes a lot to surprise me. But this update genuinely does. NotebookLM is no longer a passive summarizer, it's clear that this is a useful tool for students and professionals alike. If you've been curious about AI for learning, now's the time to give this one a try.

You can now use Google's AI study tools for NotebookLM right up until the test starts

The update also enhances the Gemini-powered conversation option and offers longer context and memory on mobile devices Google's NotebookLM is bringing some of its best AI-powered study features to its mobile app and augmenting its chat experience along the way. You can now make flashcards and quizzes based on sources you upload, even while you're walking into a classroom for a test. NotebookLM began as an AI assistant for students, but it's since expanded into a broader hub for processing information across documents, written notes, and even YouTube videos into formats that might be more useful for learning. That includes the flashcards and quizzes released earlier this year for desktops. For those who've used NotebookLM primarily on a laptop, the jump to mobile isn't just about portability. It's about shrinking the distance between intent and action. You can drill core concepts while waiting for coffee, run a quiz before bed, or build flashcards on the bus home. NotebookLM is built to let you upload and annotate sources, ask questions about your materials, and extract insights from long documents. It pulls from PDFs, transcripts, lecture notes, really anything with text, Until now, the app has mostly mirrored the desktop version's capabilities passively. You could view and scroll, but not fully engage. Now you can customize flashcards and quizzes by setting the topic, difficulty level, and length. The update adds flexibility to those sources by letting you temporarily select or unselect which sources the AI uses to generate its answers and quizzes. That's a big deal if you've uploaded dozens of documents and don't want a quiz pulling from the wrong week's material. It adds a layer of control that's especially helpful when you're on the move and less inclined to wade through file settings. The chat improvements are not just cosmetic, either. They fundamentally change how users can interact with their notes. A longer context window means the AI can track more of your study session, offering the kind of continuity usually lacking in mobile AI tools. So, while it might not automatically earn you an A, at least it will help keep all the details you need to remember top of mind until it's time to start the exam.