Gemini Notebook

What is Gemini Notebook?

USF is now offering Gemini Notebook for Education (free plan) to all current faculty, staff, and students. Students' access begins on September 1.

Gemini Notebook is an AI-powered research and note-taking assistant developed by Google. Unlike general AI chatbots that pull information from the entire internet, Gemini Notebook is source-grounded. This means it acts as a private expert on the specific documents you provide, significantly reducing AI "hallucinations" and giving you answers you can actually trust.

NotebookLM logoLearn more about Gemini Notebook ยป


Getting Started

  1. Sign In: Log in to your USF Gmail account
  2. Navigate to Google Apps and click on the Gemini Notebook app 
  3. Create Your First Notebook: Think of a "notebook" as a dedicated workspace or folder for a specific project. Click New Notebook to get started.

How to use?

Once your notebook is created, the workflow is built around three simple steps:

1. Upload Your Sources

You can upload up to 50 sources per notebook (with a limit of 500,000 words or 200MB per source). Supported formats include:

  • PDFs, MS Word and MS PowerPoint
  • Websites and YouTube video links
  • Copied text and Audio files

2. Interact and Chat

  • Ask Questions: Type questions directly into the chat. Gemini Notebook will scan your uploaded documents to give you answers, complete with in-line citations so you can click and verify the exact source text.
  • Create Notes: Save important AI responses or jot down your own thoughts directly within the workspace.

3. Generate Studio Artifacts

Gemini Notebook can instantly transform your dense documents into creative formats located in the Studio panel:

  • Audio Overviews: Generate an AI-powered podcast where two hosts discuss and summarize your material.
  • Video Overviews: Create animated, narrative visual breakdowns (including immersive Cinematic Video Overviews for advanced tiers).
  • Study Guides: Automatically draft study guides, FAQs, flashcards, timelines, or brief summaries.

Sharing Gemini Notebook

  • Faculty/Staff can share a Notebook with another faculty or staff (with the usfca.edu address)
  • Students can share with other students (with the dons.usfca.edu address)
  • Given Google's cross-domain restriction for Notebooks, faculty/staff cannot share their Notebook with a student & vice versa - a student cannot share their Notebook with faculty/staff.

  • A potential integration of Notebook with Canvas is in the process of being reviewed.
    Resources

    Workaround: Share the Source Folder via Google Drive

    For easy sharing:

  • Create a Google Drive folder named "Course Code - Notebook Sources".
  • Share that folder with the students.
  • Instruct students to open Notebook, hit New Notebook, choose Google Drive, and select that specific shared folder to generate their own local instance of the notebook instantly.
  • The faculty/staff user retains full ownership and dynamic control over their course materials.
  • If a faculty/staff adds a new reading PDF or updates a syllabus file inside that shared Google Drive folder, the change reflects instantly.
  • Students simply need to click the "Sync" or "Refresh" button inside their own Notebook source panel to instantly train their AI on the newly added documents.

Mobile Access: You can use Gemini Notebook on the go via the web or download the official mobile apps on iOS and Android via Gemini Notebook App Info.

Privacy Guardrails: Your data is kept private. Google does not use your uploaded data or queries to train its AI models unless you explicitly submit feedback.
 

Help and Support

If you run into issues with source limits, file uploads, or account access, use these official support channels:

Last updated:  September 9, 2026