While I praise NotebookLM constantly, I’ve also continuously acknowledged that the tool still has a long way to go. It’s still a relatively new tool and has some very real gaps.

While many of my nitpicks are relatively small and relate to features I’d like to have, there’s one area where the shortcomings actually get in the way of how I work: proper organization. Every single time I open NotebookLM, I find myself wishing Google Labs would add at least something to help me actually manage all the notes I’ve piled into the tool over time.

Notebooks are currently the only structure NotebookLM offers

Notebooks and nothing else

NotebookLM offers a bunch of different ways to interact with your notes. You can generate Audio Overviews, Mind Maps, Flashcards, Video Overviews, Quizzes, and more! To generate any of these (or even use the Chat functionality), you first have to create a notebook and then populate it with the sources you want NotebookLM to use. Before doing anything in NotebookLM, you need to create a notebook. Notebooks in NotebookLM are currently the only way to organize your projects within the tool. I like to think of each notebook as a folder, entirely independent of the others.

It's similar to creating a thread in an AI chatbot like ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. Every thread you create is essentially self-contained. However, I think there's a big difference in how chatbot threads and NotebookLM notebooks are meant to be used. I rarely revisit chatbot threads once the conversation ends. On the other hand, I frequently return to my NotebookLM notebooks. They're designed to grow and evolve over time, which makes organization and structure far more important. Even then, notebooks unfortunately remain the only organizational unit available.

You can't group together notebooks for similar projects, link notes across multiple notebooks, reference related content, or apply tags to make searching and cross-referencing easier. Each notebook exists in isolation, which makes managing larger workflows or complex research more cumbersome.

You can't organize the notebooks you create

No way to organize

As mentioned above, notebooks are currently the only structure NotebookLM offers, and each one exists independently. Unfortunately, the tool doesn't provide any way to organize the notebooks themselves. When you open NotebookLM, the main homepage is simply a flat list of all the notebooks you've created over time. If you've created different notebooks for similar topics, you can't group them into a folder, add tags or labels, or organize them in any meaningful way.

For instance, I rely on NotebookLM for studying, and I typically have six courses per semester. While I do create one main notebook for each course, I like to create new notebooks for trickier or more important concepts within each course. Unfortunately, I need to keep track of every notebook I create myself. When you don't open a notebook for a while, it ends up getting buried in the list, making it easy to forget it exists.

What I've done to deal with this is create a Notion page and link each NotebookLM notebook there with a brief description of its contents. This acts as an external index, allowing me to quickly see all my notebooks at a glance and navigate to the one I need without endlessly scrolling through the flat list in NotebookLM.

Ideally, NotebookLM would let you add tags or labels directly, which would make organizing and later finding related notebooks much easier. Similarly, I use NotebookLM for work and college, and use the same account for both (as I don't have premium on my college account). This means my notebooks from different contexts like, work projects, college courses, and personal research, are all mixed together in one long list, which makes it even harder to manage.

Searching across NotebookLM notebooks is impossible

Rename and search manually

After reading the section above, you might've thought, "just search for the notebook you need." Unfortunately, NotebookLM doesn't let you do that either and also lacks a search function. I'm not even talking about advanced functionality here, like typing something in natural language and having NotebookLM suggest which notebooks or notes might contain the relevant information.

I'm talking about the absolute basic functionality you find in pretty much every app: the ability to type relevant keywords and have the app show you where those keywords appear across your notes. When you open NotebookLM, you'll see all the notebooks you've created... and that's it. There's no search bar anywhere. Ultimately, the only way to find the notebook you want is by title.

Given that NotebookLM auto-names notebooks based on the content in the sources you upload, I never really remember them (or, frankly, even pay attention to them). This means you typically need to manually open several notebooks to find what you need. Thankfully, NotebookLM does let you rename titles now, which makes searching a bit easier. Even then, you need to rely on Ctrl/Cmd + F to quickly get to that notebook.

I wish there were organization features inside notebooks too

Folders, please!

Unfortunately, there currently aren't any organizational features inside individual NotebookLM notebooks. Given that the tool is designed to help you interact with information you feed it, sources are the most important part of each notebook.

Though your sources are neatly displayed in a separate Sources panel, they're presented in a single flat list. In my notebooks, I include a lot of variety. More often than not, my sources consist of a mixture of PDFs, Google Docs, YouTube videos, my own notes, Google Sheets, and much more. They're rarely all on the same topic.

That's why I'd love a feature that lets me group my sources into separate folders instead of having them all sit in one long, flat list. Being able to create folders, sections, or even just add tags would make it far easier to navigate large notebooks, quickly locate specific content, and keep related sources together.

For example, I have an "Everything" notebook where I quite literally dump everything I want to keep track of like work, education, personal life, career stuff, 3 AM thoughts. I mean, everything. Given that there's currently no way to organize a notebook's sources, it becomes pure chaos.

I also wish there were a search bar in each notebook to quickly find a specific source or piece of information. Right now, if I want to locate a particular source, I have to scroll through the entire list manually.

NotebookLM's team is working on organization

The good news is, NotebookLM's team seems to be actively working on adding some organizational features. They’ve mentioned folders multiple times on their X account. For instance, in a post announcing that notebook emojis can be customized, they also said: "We know you have a LOT of organizational requests 🙏 and we ARE working 👷‍♀️ on them (🗂️ folders anyone?)" So, we know these features are coming. Hopefully, sooner rather than later!