After months of waiting, Google began rolling out the stand-alone NotebookLM app on the App Store and Google Play on Monday.
"It's designed to make it much easier to curate and understand information that matters to you on the go."
Biao Wang, Google Product Manager on Notebook LM, to Laptop Mag
Though the app is officially available to everyone, Laptop Mag got an exclusive first look over the past several weeks. Since its release two years ago, the only way to use the AI-powered note-taking tool was via NotebookLM's website. This was a major complaint among users, since it meant you couldn’t easily access your notes on the go.
The AI-powered note-taking tool began as an experiment under the “Project Tailwind" codename and debuted at Google I/O in 2023. Two years later, ahead of Google I/O 2025 this week, NotebookLM still stands out from the competition for one reason: It’s a self-contained model.
Though AI powers it, NotebookLM doesn’t scrape the web or fabricate answers just to tell you what you want to hear. Instead, NotebookLM relies only on the sources you’ve uploaded and references them to answer any queries you may have.
Ultimately, this makes NotebookLM a much more reliable tool for students and researchers and reduces the time one needs to manually verify the AI's information.
"We're incredibly excited that the official NotebookLM app is now available," Biao Wang, Product Manager on NotebookLM, tells Laptop Mag.
"This first version of the app includes many of the core features of NotebookLM, and we’ll continue to add more functionality. It's designed to make it much easier to curate and understand information that matters to you on the go, bringing the power of NotebookLM wherever you are. "
NotebookLM’s mobile app is more than just a web wrapper
NotebookLM’s mobile app is now available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and can be installed on mobile and tablet devices. A few companies have a habit of releasing apps that are just web wrappers to rush things out the door, but NotebookLM’s app doesn't appear to be that; it's optimized for phones and tablets.
Once you launch the app and log in with your Google account, you’ll notice something right away: To use any of NotebookLM’s features, you must create a notebook and populate it with sources you’d like the tool to reference.
I’m a university freshman and rely heavily on the AI-powered note-taking tool for exam prep. Naturally, I already have a couple of notebooks populated with multiple sources. So instead of creating a new notebook every time I need to study a different topic in a course, I locate the one I’ve already made and upload the latest source to it.
NotebookLM doesn’t save your responses unless you manually do so. Ultimately, part of me was worried that my existing notebooks wouldn’t carry over to the mobile app, but that isn’t the case here.
All my previously created notebooks were synced and ready to go when I logged in. You can also create new notebooks and upload sources directly in the app by hitting the + Create New button.
The iconic Audio Overviews feature is fully integrated into NotebookLM’s mobile app
NotebookLM went viral last year when it debuted Audio Overviews, which can convert your uploaded sources into AI-generated discussions within minutes.
Though NotebookLM isn’t the only tool that can generate AI podcasts, I’ve tried nearly all of them and noticed the same issue: The podcasts aren’t entertaining to listen to. This isn’t the case with NotebookLM.
Instead of an Audio Overview discussing your sources in a monotonous tone, two AI hosts discuss your sources in an engaging and lively manner. It’s hard to tell that the podcasts are generated by AI, since they have an element of natural conversation.
The hosts occasionally include fun jokes to keep the conversation and mood light. This makes the experience more enjoyable and helps transform a relatively boring topic like “Two-Dimensional Motion and Projections” into something fun to listen to.
Thankfully, the Audio Overview feature is integrated within the mobile app. When you open a notebook in the app, you’ll notice three tabs at the bottom: Sources, Chat, and Studio. You can generate an Audio Overview by switching to the Studio tab and hitting the Generate button.
A few months after launching Audio Overviews, Google improved it by adding an Interactive mode that lets you interrupt the hosts and hop into the conversation instead of just passively listening.
This allows you to share any opinions you may have with the hosts, ask questions about your sources, and even steer the discussion in a direction that’s most helpful for your learning. In the same Studio tab, you only need to tap the “Interactive - BETA” button, then hit “Join” to join the conversation. I noticed that the Interactive mode isn’t available in notebooks with only a few sources.
The mobile app still feels like a work-in-progress
Though NotebookLM’s mobile app gets the basic premise of the app right and includes its most iconic Audio Overview feature, the app is clearly still a work in progress. Other than Audio Overviews, it seems like you can currently only ask the AI tool questions about your sources and nothing else.
On the other hand, NotebookLM’s web version has several features, like the ability to convert your sources into Mind Maps to see how different ideas connect. You can also turn your sources into a Study Guide, Briefing Doc, FAQ, or Timeline. You can find all of these options within the Studio panel on NotebookLM’s web version.
The mobile app’s Studio panel currently only offers the Audio Overview option and nothing else. This isn’t all that surprising, since it’s just the first version of the app and is bound to get updated over time.
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