Google NotebookLM

The audio overviews always error out. They don’t generate. Constant errors! Pretty bad for Google if you ask me

I wish that I would’ve had this back in high school

First, let me just say that having access to such-cutting edge technology is a dream come true. This tool has the capacity to streamline studying in a way that's never been done before, connecting some of the dots between an LLM like Gemini, and a tool that's more explicitly catered to learners. However, not all of the functionality is smoothed out yet. Sources sometimes take multiple tries to be added, and the podcast feature seems to only work when using the interactive variant. I haven't actually tried interacting with the podcast though, as I was worried about it bugging out. When I first got it to play, swiping a notification off-screen caused the application's UI to think the podcast wasn't playing anymore, but it was. Now, in the application's defense, I was using nearly 500 pages of sources, consisting of both web pages and PDFs. The podcast itself was nearly flawless. There were some terms it failed to pronounce properly, but most were industry specific. To be fair yet again, I am studying for the CompTIA CySA+ certification. That's a lot of strange phrases and acronyms to cover. I feel like I've been harsh, so let me say again that this is a wonderful tool! I see what this is going to become and I simply want to contribute. I actually have a few feature suggestions: - A flashcard generator. - A practice problem generator. - A quiz/exam simulator. - A tool to plan out and keep track of a study plan's progress. - And possibly a way for NotebookLLM to plan an entire syllabus worth of lesson plans. Definitely some big asks here! I also realize that an LLM can handle some of these things out of the box, but I thought a special UI or a place to store generated items like flashcards, user-typed notes, or quizzes would be helpful. Please, please, please keep making awesome stuff!

This is just an awesome all around tool to have in your toolkit. I can’t recommend it more.

I added 3 URLs as a resource. It gave a length of 24min but keeps stopping half way. There’s no error message or anyway of knowing why…but for the part I was able to hear it was really good!

9 times out of 10 it won’t ever load and play the podcasts that it generates. If the system functioned as it is intended to it would be great and the couple of PDFs that I was able to get it to generate a podcast for turned out well. Much better than reading the 30 pages. But like I said most of the time it spends hours generating the podcast from the PDF and then after it’s done it will never load the podcast for you to listen to. It just spins forever and eventually you get a message that couldn’t load. And I’m on WiFi so it’s not a bandwidth issue.

I love this app when it’s working but 80% of the time I cannot get the audio to play. It was load for hours at a time. Do not waste your money paying for a premium subscription because this didn’t start until I made the purchase. 0 stars

Overall, brilliant but other LLMs are catching on and implementing this concept. My biggest complaint is how you cannot access pinned responses AKA “Notes” through the app. And you will lose all of the information crunched out in the app. The app is also unstable and frequently crashes. Download Chrome and access Notebook LM through the browser. Faster, more stable, and you have your notes / pinned responses.

This is incredible technology and it creates great reviews. My only issue is that it turns off noise cancellation on my headphones which then makes it practically impossible to hear in my headphones so the only way to listen is by finding somewhere quiet and private and playing through speaker.

App has several issues: 1. Audio does not play or will fail to play if app is closed before audio starts playing 2. Audio will fail to download if app is closed 3. You cannot download off the app onto your phone - only onto the app 4. Long wait times for audio processing to podcast - which can also variably fail 5. Podcast creation limit of 3 / day - but sometimes 0. If you trigger a creation, there is a chance of it registering you making one, but it’ll say you’ve reached your limit and nothing will play 6. No ability to change podcast length limits in app 7. Podcasts will hang and not play or download