Frankly, most AI tools that students swear by aren’t all that great. Half the time, they generate inaccurate information, give incorrect answers, or overcomplicate things for no reason. NotebookLM doesn’t do any of that.
Instead, it’s packed with features that have completely transformed the way I study. It can generate AI podcasts using sources you provide, create study guides and summarize documents—all without fabricating false information. Now, with its new Mind Map feature, I can’t help but wonder how I ever crammed for exams without it.
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Maybe you'll get some use out of them, too.
Mind Maps make it easier to see how ideas connect
If you’ve ever used Obsidian, you’re probably familiar with its Graph View, which visually maps out all your notes. This helps you quickly see relationships between ideas and concepts at a glance.
NotebookLM’s new Mind Maps feature aims to do something similar—it visually summarizes your sources as a branching diagram. So, instead of reading through pages of research and manually identifying key concepts, you can simply upload your sources to NotebookLM and let it do all the hard work for you.
To create a Mind Map in NotebookLM, start by opening a new or existing notebook. Add the sources you’d like NotebookLM to process, then wait for them to upload. Click the Mind Map button in the Chat panel, and within seconds, an interactive Mind Map will appear under the Notes section in the Studio panel.
I found that Mind Maps work best with either a relatively lengthy document or multiple sources. For instance, I created a notebook for my Object-Oriented Programming course at the start of the semester, and I've been continuously adding sources to it. It now has eight sources, and here’s the Mind Map NotebookLM generated for it:
Since my sources were lecture slides categorized by week, the Mind Map included nine different nodes. One node summarized Core Concepts from all my sources, while the others represented each week’s content.
Clicking the arrow icon ( > ) next to a node reveals subnodes. In my case, expanding the Core Concepts node displayed all the key topics covered in my sources, while each Week node’s subnodes broke down that week’s lecture content.
Mind Maps aren’t just useful for quickly visualizing topics and their connections. NotebookLM can also generate summaries when you click on a node, and you can ask follow-up questions about specific concepts.
Just like with other NotebookLM features, the AI tool only pulls information from your sources when answering queries. You can also download your Mind Map or share it with other users.
If you don't see this feature yet, don't worry, as usual, it's being rolled out gradually. I played around with it for a bit, and I'm already excited to see how it changes my study sessions.